| dc.description.abstract | The perception of reality is a unique characteristic of every human. People tend to perceive the phenomena of the world and of their daily life in different ways than the person next to them. This is one of the features that makes each human distinctive.
Part of understanding the perception of life is also the characteristic of the perceptions of risks. Risks are existing in human life, from the early years of human evolution, in different formats and prominence for humans. Risks have evolved together with the human evolution and therefore have changed drastically. Together with the development of other fields of cognitive sciences and of technology, the academic community started theorizing and analyzing the risk perception relatively recently: the 2nd part of the 20th century. During the last decade of the 20th and as of the start of the 21st century, the importance of the risk perception became a notably critical aspect of the public life, and thus the analysis of the risk perception models was developed further.
This Thesis tries to examine the number and the qualities of the proposed theoretical risk perception models, via a structured literature review aiming to measure the appearance of relevant scientific papers in academic journals. The higher number of appearances in academic journals in regards with a specific risk perception model is an indication of its importance, however, it does not necessarily mean it is a more useful model. The applications of every model are a supplementary factor of each model’s to be taken into consideration.
This Thesis will help and support teachers, students and interested readers to find in an easy and convenient way towards a catalogue of all the risk perception models and theories. It could be used as a guide to navigate a tour through the Risk Perception models via historical and usage routes. It provides also support in the understanding of the interpretation of the model. Furthermore, it indicates the scientific fields where each model is applicable and finally the importance that the academic community realizes all the models have. Finally, it offers a categorization spectrum of the models, which could be the basis of discussion and arguments, in favor or against the proposed categories.
The Thesis is divided into six chapters.
Chapter One, is an introduction that presents the topic, the scope and the limitations of the study.
Chapter Two, provides the methodology of the performed literature review and the results per risk perception model.
Chapter Three, provides the results per engine and argues about which the most important models are, based on the research results.
Chapter Four, presents all the accepted as valid theoretical risk perception models, with the exposition of their main characteristics.
Chapter Five, posits the concept and the proposed split of the models into categories; presents their applications.
Chapter Six, concludes with a review of the thesis and the most important suppositions, which are drawn from the analysis. | el_GR |
