Adults' perceptions of risk in the big data era

Abstract

The present digital era has seen rapid growth in the availability of big data; we were curious about whether such availability of data changes perceptions and assessments of risk. In this paper, we investigate adults' (35-63 years old) perceptions of risk in the big-data era and how it figures in their everyday life. We developed decision-making scenarios for socio-economic, environmental and health topics that involve modelling with personal value systems alongside Gapminder word map data. Going beyond the idea of risk in statistical theory, we attempt to gain an understanding of the processes by which adults assess risks.