Differences in risk perception in Portuguese youths

As the world faces an increase in frequency and severity of natural disasters due to climate change, risk management has become a critical component of decreasing communities' vulnerability. Studies have shown that when populations adopt behaviors to prevent or manage natural disasters, they can reduce their risk. In 2011, Portugal began incorporating risk reduction education into school curricula to help students understand natural disasters, as well as how to prepare for or mitigate their effects. The researchers assessed three main objectives during this study: preconceptions students had about the fundamental concepts of risk; awareness of natural risks in Portugal as a whole and the Metropolitan Area of Porto (MAP); and whether students could identify the causes, effects, and mitigation strategies associated with risks likely to occur in the regions where they live.

The MAP consists of 17 municipalities in the northeast region of Portugal. While there is quite a bit of urban area, including in the coastal city of Porto, there are also large areas of agricultural and forested land. The study took place in April 2017 in schools across the MAP. Researchers distributed questionnaires to 308 Year 9 students aged 14-16 years prior to their risk education coursework. The questionnaire consisted of three sections. The first section assessed students' knowledge of basic risk concepts, including susceptibility, vulnerability, risk, and disaster. The second evaluated students' spatial associations by asking them to classify the likelihood of a disaster happening in their municipality versus Portugal as a whole. Finally, the third section focused on student knowledge regarding the causes, effects, and mitigation strategies for the risks they believed to be most frequent in their municipality.

Researchers found that while just over half of the students correctly identified the concept of risk, only 17% identified the correct definition for “disaster”, roughly 30% correctly defined “vulnerability”, and just 27% of students selected the correct definition for “susceptibility”. This indicated that students had relatively limited prior knowledge regarding the fundamental concepts of risk education. In the second section, students were relatively successful regarding the identification of probable risks in the MAP and in Portugal. However, students, especially those in the urban area of Porto, thought disasters were less likely occur within their own municipality than in Portugal overall. For example, students indicated that there was a high probability of forest fires at a national scale, but there were no particular municipalities in the MAP where students thought forest fires were likely to occur. The researchers attributed this discrepancy to media coverage of disasters, which may give students the idea that these events occur far away rather than in the areas where they live. The majority of students answered the questions in section three incorrectly, indicating that students had limited knowledge regarding the causes, effects, and mitigation strategies of the natural disasters most likely to occur in their municipality. Only 25% of students correctly identified causes and consequences, while roughly 42% were able to correctly match mitigation measures to the risk.

There were some limitations to this study. The program was conducted using only Year 9 students in the MAP in Portugal, which limits the generalizability of the study. After evaluating the results, researchers acknowledged that some of the definitions in the first part of the questionnaire were similar enough to cause confusion, which may have had an effect on the results of the study.

The researchers concluded that making programming specific to the geographical location and its characteristics is key for developing successful risk reduction education. They recommend performing additional studies to determine how to most effectively incorporate risk education into formal educational settings and suggest performing a study using a post-program survey to understand the effects risk education curricula can have on students. In addition, if the same or a similar questionnaire were to be used in another study, the researchers recommend changes in the questions to make the definitions clearer.