Fear factor: overreacting to risks.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Citings - Brief article

"OVERREACTION to risk is frequently found in the environmental realm," according to a study by Cass Sunstein and Richard Zeckhauser in the March issue of the journal Environmental and Resource Economics. We needed a study to show that?

Sunstein, on leave from a post at Harvard Law School, and Zeckhauser, a Harvard political scientist, ran some experiments that showed scary stories cause people to overrate minuscule risks. In one experiment, students indicated they would pay four times more to avoid a one-in-a-million risk after being told an emotional story about the horrors of cancer. The authors suggest that overreaction to the tiny risks posed by nuclear waste, terrorism, the chemical Alar, the toxic waste at Love Canal...