SCARR
Social Contexts and Responses to Risk

SCARR research reinforces the key point that the risks people perceive and respond to in everyday life often differ from the risks identified as objective facts or assumed to be high priorities by business, planners or policy-makers. The projects show the wide range of factors (social group identification, life experience, the perceptions of others, our emotions and apprehension of other people's emotions) that can influence the recognition of risk in contexts from sexual behaviour and partnering choices to pensions and financial planning, from crime or transport to industrial pollution and environmental hazard. Analysis of conceptual and methodological development shows increasing opportunities for links between psychology, economics and sociology.

The projects also contribute to developing research methods. The network works closely with SoRU.

The network, financed by a core grant of £2.8m, brings together sociologists, psychologists, economists, experts on social policy, the media, socio-legal studies and law and other social scientists from 14 universities. For details contact Jens Zinn or Peter Taylor-Gooby.

Core funding for the Priority Network has now come to an end.  These web pages will be maintained.  Work on co-funded and associated research projects and on the Beijing conference in 2009 continues.  The work of the Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty Group, of Thematic Group 04 on Risk and Uncertainty of the International Sociological Association and of Research Network 22 of the European Sociological Association on the Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty will also continue to develop.