Generating Effective Risk Messages: How Scary Should Your Risk Communication Be?: Kim Witte

RISK managers continually search for effective ways to disseminate riskinformation to the public. Unfortunately, "despite agreement that theway information is presented matters, there is no clear consensus in the literature about what specific features communicate risk concepts well" (Johnson, Fisher, Smith, & Desvousges, 1988, p. 30). Further, "while risk communication among technical people may be more or less straightforward (for example, interagency dialogue), risk communication with the public remains quite elusive" (Devgun, 1991, p. 7).