Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication: Emerging Technologies, Emerging Challenges

EMERGING RISKS, EMERGING CHALLENGES

Nanotechnology involves the fabrication, manipulation, and control of materials at the atomic level. In many respects nanotechnologies derive from a series of incremental developments within physical chemistry and biochemistry, quantum physics, materials sciences, and metrology. The term itself comes from the nanometer (nm), a physical unit of length one millionth of a millimeter, or the equivalent to 1/80,000 of the width of a human hair. The interest for scientists and engineers stems from fundamental chemical or electrical properties of a material that can radically change in the 100 nm range and smaller. Such property changes have led many to predict a range of new advances in science and engineering over the coming decades, in the domains of new materials, the environment, in medicine, and in information technology. The past 10 years have seen investment worldwide in nanotechnologies research and development rapidly increasing. In the United States alone over $14 billion has been dedicated since 2000 to the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

Alongside the hopes for advances, nanotechnology developments also raise the possibility of uncertainties and novel risks. If common materials exhibit different or enhanced chemical and electrical properties when fabricated at the nanoscale, these changes might also result in unanticipated human health or environmental effects. These concerns were comprehensively reviewed in 2004 in a landmark report by the U.K. Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering,⁽¹⁾ which concluded that materials in the nano form should be treated as new chemicals for regulatory purposes, and that novel toxicology risks would require further in-depth investigation. The report also highlighted the importance of gaining an understanding of public acceptance and perception of nanotechnologies, arguing that there were potential parallels with other controversial technologies such as biotechnology⁽²⁾ or nuclear power. And in a pattern strangely reminiscent of earlier controversies, scientists and industrial proponents have expressed concern that a fledgling industry might suffer stigmatization and amplified public concern,⁽³⁾ while environmental and consumer organizations have emphasized the need for strong regulations to be in place before nanotechnologies are developed or used on a large scale in order to address uncertainties and risks.⁽⁴⁾ Looking back over the eight years since the Royal Society conducted its inquiry, the stage at the time seemed set for nanotechnology to become the next prominent example of social amplification of risk. As the discussion below illustrates, however, history has followed a somewhat different trajectory. Of course, it did not automatically follow that nanotechnologies would encounter the levels of controversy seen with biotechnology, as we know that the social amplification of risk perceptions requires the coming together over time of a complex mix of interacting factors (risk events with high signal value, extensive media reporting, regulatory or corporate failure, distrust, and blame),⁽⁵⁾ some of which are clearly not currently present in the nanotechnology case. However, an important research question remains as to whether amplification or attenuation are the defining characteristics of the emergence of nanotechnology risk perceptions.

Following the publication of the RS/RAE⁽¹⁾ report a number of research groups have begun to study nanotechnology risk perceptions in more detail, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The objective of such work has been to understand a number of phenomena: the logic of risk perceptions including their social and management contexts (for example, processes of risk regulation and governance, risk management, and risk communication); the mental models and lay judgments of the perceived causes and consequences of risk toxicity and exposure; the changing nature of risk and benefit perceptions as the technology becomes more well-known; attitudinal or affective variables that predict patterns of aversion to or tolerance of technological risks; and the role and impacts of dialogue processes with various public groups. That effort has already highlighted significant conceptual and methodological challenges for the field.

A first challenge follows from the very diversity of the technologies and applications involved—indeed the RS/RAE⁽¹⁾ report argued that the study and application of nanotechnology encompasses such a wide range of materials, processes, and products that to make any singular categorization is misleading, preferring the plural term nanotechnologies. The implication for risk perception and communication work here is that the type and application of nanotechnology proposed—for example, in health, energy, or food—is likely to matter for the ways people construct its risks and benefits, and judge its acceptability. Detailed studies are therefore needed of the way people respond to this diversity in both technology and application.

A second issue in studying nanotechnology risk perceptions arises because of the unfamiliar and intangible nature of the concept. Nanotechnology can be described as an emerging technology—one where significant research and development has yet to take place, relatively few products and processes have come to market, and entrenched attitudes and social representations have yet to be established.⁽⁶⁾ No surprise then that public familiarity with nanotechnologies has been found to be particularly low. Satterfield et al.⁽⁷⁾ reviewed 22 studies of nanotechnology perceptions conducted between 2002 and 2009 in North America, Europe, and Japan. Data pooled from the 11 surveys, which asked a comparable familiarity question, found that more than 51% of all participants who were asked about this new class of technology reported knowing “nothing at all,” with large variation across the individual studies (25–71%). In the nine surveys that asked a specific question on whether judgments of benefit exceed risks and vice versa, in seven of the nine a majority saw judgments of benefits outweighing risks—an overall pattern widely reported in the survey literature thus far. However, across these nine studies on average 44% of the respondents reported they were unsure about risks and benefits, highlighting the potentially labile nature of such judgments. Such studies are of course invaluable as baseline measurements, anticipating subsequent work tracking the development of nanotechnology risk perceptions into the future. Indeed, this study of nanotechnology risk perceptions is probably unique in occurring prior to any major commercial or other deployment. Compounding unfamiliarity, nanotechnology is also very much an “invisible” technology operating at the atomic scale; hence, very few everyday concepts or analogies are available for anchoring individuals’ mental models and judgments of risk and benefits.

Contemporary theory suggests that given such constraints people's responses to surveys are not preformed, but will be “constructed”: first, through engagement with the survey instrument at hand and their varied interpretations of this^(8,9) and, second, from the cultural and social dispositions people already hold.^(10,11) As Fischhoff and Fischhoff⁽¹²⁾ have observed about biotechnology surveys, under such circumstances highly structured questions inevitably leave respondents guessing about the meaning of the questions and investigators guessing about the meanings of the answers. Interpreting any particular survey finding about nanotechnology risk perceptions therefore has to involve a considerable degree of caution and care. Surveys can, of course, be complemented with more in-depth structured qualitative evidence. For example, in deliberative work conducted in parallel in the United States and the United Kingdom, Pidgeon et al.⁽¹³⁾ report that people appear to bring to bear a generic model of “new technology,” something generally thought of as benefiting society, when forming their judgment of the risks and benefits of the more specific case of “nanotechnology.” Such findings help to explain why some people currently think benefits will outweigh risks despite relatively low familiarity. More sophisticated quantitative studies, only just beginning to emerge, try to overcome many of the (un)familiarity issues by providing participants with extended descriptions of applications, or information about possible risks and benefits. The challenge here is to ensure that the information provided is not too tightly framed (in any particular, positive or negative, direction) thereby shaping judgments in unintended ways.

A third issue in studying perceptions of nanotechnologies is that they raise wider value and ethical questions over and above those of risk assessment and toxicology. Although this is not a new issue for the risk field,⁽¹⁴⁾ such concerns are particularly acute for emerging technologies. They include the long-term unintended consequences of nanotechnology developments, the means by which governments and society can exercise regulatory control, who to trust to ensure effective governance, and responsibility for reparation if things do go wrong.^(1,15) Experience from other technology domains suggests that responses and controversies around emerging “risks” often tap into a number of these wider concerns,^(16,17) and as a result the scope of thinking and practice around risk communication must be widened to incorporate an extended anticipatory dialogue with affected parties and stakeholders—something now labeled “upstream public engagement.”^(18,19) The aim here is not so much to communicate scientific information to people about an emerging technology and its potential risks and benefits (although this goal is, of course, very important), and certainly not to persuade people that potential risk issues are unproblematic, but to generate an effective dialogue over the values, visions, and wider societal implications of the emerging science and engineering as one contribution to a process of “responsible innovation.”^(20,21) Wider questions for such engagement include whether there is a need for the technology, who will own it, can we anticipate and regulate significant unknowns, and who will be responsible if things do go wrong?⁽¹⁸⁾

According to Kurath and Gisler⁽²²⁾ an effective nanotechnology engagement project is one that uses a participatory methodology, avoids the traditional framing of the scientists as “experts” and the public as “nonexperts,” uses a two-way dialogue style rather than a one-way communication of information from scientists to the public, has a measurable impact on policy or decision making, and reflects critically on its methodologies and results. In the risk arena such methodologies are now well-understood in terms of analytic-deliberative theory,^(23,24) and such exercises also provide opportunities to study in much greater depth than with surveys or experimental studies how citizens might respond to the unfamiliar concepts of nanotechnologies when they have had an opportunity to gain structured information about them. Although we have already learned much from the nanotechnology case about methods of upstream public engagement, as Toumey⁽²⁵⁾ has remarked recently there is much that still needs to be done. One problematic area is the possibility that the very act of taking part in an upstream dialogue process, or even a survey, serves to construct a “risk object” for people, which would otherwise not exist. In effect, does doing research on nanotechnologies itself contribute to social amplification of risk perceptions?

Corner and Pidgeon⁽²⁶⁾ review 18 different nanotechnology deliberation projects conducted in Europe and North America, with several again reporting significant positivity towards nanotechnologies. In one of the earliest U.S. studies, Macoubrie⁽²⁷⁾ found that a majority of participants felt the benefits of nanotechnologies outweighed their risks after several hours of deliberation, although trust and a range of other issues were also important concerns for participants in this study as in several others. Other studies by contrast report a latent ambivalence towards nanotechnologies that did not appear to diminish with greater knowledge and awareness,^{(1,15,28,29,30)} including scepticism towards government and industry, and their ability to represent the public's interests regarding the regulation of nanotechnologies, or the need for the product in the first place.⁽³¹⁾ This type of informed judgment bears on the social context in which a science is conducted, rather than the risks of the technology itself. Reflecting this distinction, Pidgeon et al.⁽¹³⁾ found that their participants in both the United States and the United Kingdom focused on the social rather than the technical aspects of nanotechnology risks.

THE ARTICLES IN THIS SPECIAL COLLECTION

This Risk Analysis special series stems from invited paper presentations at an international workshop on “Perceptions of Nanotechnology Risk” held at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UC Santa Barbara in January 2010. The U.S. National Science Foundation has funded this Center since 2006 to study, among several issues, the social and ethical dynamics of nanotechnology risk perceptions as they were developing over time, and as seen through the theoretical lens of the social amplification of risk. The two days brought together a range of risk perception and communication specialists from North America and Europe to discuss the emerging landscape of nanotechnology risk perceptions research. The papers presented at the workshop covered a range of themes, including: governance and nanotechnology regulation; early stage nanotechnology risk perceptions; media representations of nanotechnology and emerging mental models; labeling and risk perceptions; cultural values and cognitions; new methods for studying nanotechnology risk perceptions; and upstream risk communication and analytic-deliberative processes.

As a result of the workshop, authors were invited to develop revised versions of their articles for potential inclusion in this special issue of Risk Analysis. A total of six papers have been accepted, all being subject to the normal peer-review process for the journal.

The articles, taken as a whole, cover a range of topics and perspectives. The first two focus upon the question of studying risk issues with low public familiarity. Under such circumstances an important information source likely to impact public awareness and attitudes towards nanotechnologies over time, and potentially signal and amplify risks, is media coverage. Friedman and Egolf report on an important empirical project they have been running for several years now to understand evolving mainstream U.S. and U.K. media coverage of nanotechnologies. They report the volumes of coverage of health and environmental risks over the period 2000–2009 as exceptionally low, and as outweighed by the many more articles extolling nanotechnology benefits. A surprising finding of their research is that it was scientists, rather than environmental or consumer groups, who were reported as raising risks for the media.⁽³²⁾ One thing that we do know here is that many external stakeholders (for example, environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, and Practical Action) have tried to remain engaged with the nanotechnology debate, in sharp contrast to the situation that existed with biotechnology.⁽³³⁾ Friedman and Egolf also conclude that there has been no nano “risk event” of significant size to date, and with the potential for generating sustained media coverage; something that can be compared, for example, with the extensive international media coverage earlier this year of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. These findings again go some way to explaining why attitude surveys over the equivalent period⁽⁷⁾ show both low familiarity, and perceived benefits as outweighing risks. The authors also speculate whether this may create the conditions for public distrust of nanotechnologies were such a risk-amplifying event ever to occur with a nanotechnology product or process.

The media findings of Friedman and Egolf are neatly complemented by the second article in the series, by Priest, Lane, Hand, Greenhalgh, and Kramer. These authors report a qualitative interview study of South Carolina citizen views of nanotechnology, part of a wider mixed-methods longitudinal panel study they are running. Such longitudinal approaches are methodologically challenging, hence relatively rare in the risk perceptions domain. On the basis of their in-depth thematic analysis they conclude that nanotechnology risks have yet to enter public consciousness in any significant way. Their study again gives considerable insight into why the findings from tracking survey studies show such positive judgments of nanotechnologies—confirming that a beneficial “technology template” dominates participants’ interpretations of the issue, in the United States at least,⁽¹³⁾ something also marking out nanotechnology images and understandings as very different from the more polarized representations found with biotechnology.⁽³⁴⁾ They also conclude that, in social amplification terms, nanotechnologies currently hold the status of an “attenuated hazard.”⁽³⁵⁾ Since such cases are far less well documented and understood than those of risk amplification, this finding clearly warrants further research attention in order to better understand the causes and (non)drivers in the nanotechnology case.

As nanotechnology perceptions research has begun to accumulate, studies have turned from designs that measure basic variables such as familiarity, risk, and benefits, to ones using more experimental methods. Developing materials and narratives that frame and contextualize nanotechnologies in particular ways, and measuring the impacts of these on participants, is a key strategy for understanding the operation of more distal factors (e.g., equity and fairness, vulnerability, trust, signal value) that are likely to shape perceptions in the future. The next three articles in the series take this approach. Conti, Satterfield, and Harthorn use a major U.S. survey to investigate how risk and benefit framings interact with the individual difference variables of perceived vulnerability to risks and attitudes towards distributive justice. They find that these remain significantly correlated with nanotechnology risk perceptions and heightened sensitivity to risk information, even when controlling for known demographic factors including gender and race: the so-called white male effect.⁽³⁶⁾ Their data also add to a growing body of evidence^(37,38) that health risks associated with nanotechnology in food are likely to be particularly sensitive for many people, and as a result qualitatively different from the positive perceptions that people currently hold of nanotechnologies more generally. McComas and Besley investigate the related question of procedural justice and fairness, as related to the perceived behavior of risk managers. These factors explain levels of nanotechnology concern over and above variables such as general knowledge about science, or nanotechnology familiarity. The important conclusion to be drawn from both the Conti and McComas articles is that public engagement and risk communication with nanotechnologies will need to extend well beyond a mere provision of scientific information, or awareness raising, to encompass meaningful and widespread public discussion and dialogue that also focus upon both distributional and procedural fairness, amongst other societal questions. Although this is a well-rehearsed conclusion from many studies conducted by the risk communication research community on other controversial topics over the past four decades,^(39,40) those working directly on nanotechnology and its applications do not always view their interaction with the public in the same light,⁽⁶⁾ suggesting a need to educate engineers and scientists (on the social aspects of nanotechnology risks) as much as the public at large on nano-science and engineering.

In the fifth article Siegrist and Keller turn to the important question of labeling nanotechnology products and its role in communicating risk messages, an issue that has featured prominently in the early debates about regulation of nanotechnologies.⁽¹⁾ Should we place explicit labels on products containing nanotechnologies in the interests of transparency and openness, or will this act as a precautionary signal for people, perhaps unduly heightening risk perceptions and influencing preferences? In an exploratory study they find that labeling does indeed increase risk and reduce benefit perceptions, something also consistent with the operation of affect as a core preference construction heuristic.⁽⁴¹⁾ Although it is impossible in this case to say whether such a precautionary response is appropriate or not, an important conclusion is that labeling impacts require further detailed research. It is also clear that emerging technologies bring very different requirements for risk communication—not least because hypothetical uncertainties and data gaps, rather than empirically observed risks, are often the dominant considerations. The final article in the series, by Wiedemann, Schütz, Spangenberg, and Krug, addresses the need for methods that support communication of the science and toxicology underlying nanotechnology risks. They point out that the uncertainties present with such novel risks mean that it may be difficult even for experts to grasp the chain of reasoning behind a particular risk assessment. To enhance communication they advocate a novel methodology, the evidence map, which allows the argument and evidence structure underlying a set of risk assessments to be explicitly displayed, then applying this to the case of titanium dioxide nanoparticle risks.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Taken as a whole the articles in this special collection add to a new and exciting body of literature within risk research. They also help to underline some of the many conceptual and methodological challenges associated with the study of risk perception and communication at the very early stage in a technology's lifespan, something with clear lessons for the study of other emerging technology risks, such as geoengineering.⁽⁴²⁾ We cannot yet say how public representations of this novel set of technologies will eventually turn out, although early indications are that current generation nanotechnologies (with the possible exception of those applied to food) are less similar to biotechnologies in terms of their risk perception signature than has hitherto been assumed. Of course, further convergence of technological domains, across nano-, bio-, and information technologies, may well raise issues more contentious than those identified by research so far. Risk communication and public engagement practices may also have to develop new approaches in the upstream moment: to incorporate wider value questions in dialogue, as well as to avoid the overframing of information provision and the construction of risk objects where none were before. All of this points to the need for extended empirical tracking of nanotechnology mental models and beliefs, methodological development for upstream communication and dialogue strategies, alongside further conceptual work on the distal factors that will shape nanotechnology perceptions across different application domains and over time.