Conjoint analysis as a tool for risk communication
Alriksson, S; Öberg, T.
Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, Baltimore, Maryland, December 3-6, 2006

Abstract
The steel industry in Sweden is working to solve several sustainability problems related to the production and use of steel products, such as; emissions of carbon dioxide, toxic substances and metals, use of non-renewable energy and use of raw materials to mention a few. To deal with some of these sustainability and risk related problems a research project called the Steel Eco-Cycle has been initialised, where one of the subprojects focuses on attitudes towards these environmental issues. Conjoint analysis is used as a tool for assessing preferences among different individuals and groups of people. A preparatory study has now been performed to evaluate attitudes towards emission of carbon dioxide, use of non-renewable raw materials, use of energy deriving from non-renewable energy sources and emission of dioxins. The study was performed on three groups of people; undergraduate students, representatives from the Swedish steel industry and members of public. The participating students came from the University of Kalmar and were divided into three groups depending on their major subject; environmental sciences, environmental technology or industrial organisation and economics. Preliminary results seem to imply that the experienced threat from toxic substances (such as dioxins) overcomes the respondent's feelings towards other environmentalh as global warming deriving from emission of carbon dioxide. Even though some sub-groups can be found with the participants, the results do not indicate any clear groupings of the participants.

Poster as a PDF-file, 110 kb