Risk Analysis, Vol. 31, No. 11, 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01738.

x
Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication:
Emerging Technologies, Emerging Challenges
Nick Pidgeon,
1,
Barbara Harthorn,
2
and Terre Sattereld
3
Nanotechnology involves the fabrication, manipulation, and control of materials at the atomic
level and may also bring novel uncertainties and risks. Potential parallels with other con-
troversial technologies mean there is a need to develop a comprehensive understanding of
processes of public perception of nanotechnology uncertainties, risks, and benets, alongside
related communication issues. Study of perceptions, at so early a stage in the development
trajectory of a technology, is probably unique in the risk perception and communication eld.
As such it also brings new methodological and conceptual challenges. These include: dealing
with the inherent diversity of the nanotechnology eld itself; the unfamiliar and intangible
nature of the concept, with few analogies to anchor mental models or risk perceptions; and
the ethical and value questions underlying many nanotechnology debates. Utilizing the lens
of social amplication of risk, and drawing upon the various contributions to this special issue
of Risk Analysis on Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication, nanotechnology
may at present be an attenuated hazard. The generic idea of upstream public engagement
for emerging technologies such as nanotechnology is also discussed, alongside its importance
for future work with emerging technologies in the risk communication eld.
EMERGING RISKS, EMERGING
CHALLENGES
Nanotechnology involves the fabrication, manip-
ulation, 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, mate-
rials sciences, and metrology. The term itself comes
from the nanometer (nm), a physical unit of length
1
Understanding Risk Research Group, School of Psychology,
Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
2
NSF Centre for Nanotechnology in Society, University of
California, Santa Barbara CA, USA.
3
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Address correspondence to Nick Pidgeon, Understanding Risk

Research Group, School of Psychology, Tower Building, Park
Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, Wales, UK; tel: 02920 874567; fax:
02920 874858; [email protected].
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 ma-
terials, the environment, in medicine, and in informa-
tion technology. The past 10 years have seen invest-
ment 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, nanotechnol-
ogy developments also raise the possibility of uncer-
tainties and novel risks. If common materials exhibit
different or enhanced chemical and electrical proper-
ties when fabricated at the nanoscale, these changes
1694 0272-4332/11/0100-1694$22.00/1
C
2011 Society for Risk Analysis
Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication 1695
might also result in unanticipated human health or
environmental effects. These concerns were com-
prehensively 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 re-
port also highlighted the importance of gaining an
understanding of public acceptance and perception
of nanotechnologies, arguing that there were poten-
tial parallels with other controversial technologies
such as biotechnology
(2)
or nuclear power. And in
a pattern strangely reminiscent of earlier controver-
sies, scientists and industrial proponents have ex-
pressed concern that a edgling industry might suffer
stigmatization and amplied public concern,
(3)
while
environmental and consumer organizations have em-
phasized 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 amplication
of risk. As the discussion below illustrates, however,
history has followed a somewhat different trajectory.
Of course, it did not automatically follow that nan-
otechnologies would encounter the levels of contro-
versy seen with biotechnology, as we know that the
social amplication of risk perceptions requires the
coming together over time of a complex mix of in-
teracting 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 re-
mains as to whether amplication or attenuation are
the dening characteristics of the emergence of nan-
otechnology 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 ap-
proaches. The objective of such work has been to
understand a number of phenomena: the logic of
risk perceptions including their social and manage-
ment contexts (for example, processes of risk reg-
ulation and governance, risk management, and risk
communication); the mental models and lay judg-
ments of the perceived causes and consequences of
risk toxicity and exposure; the changing nature of
risk and benet perceptions as the technology be-
comes more well-known; attitudinal or affective vari-
ables 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 signicant conceptual
and methodological challenges for the eld.
A rst challenge follows from the very diver-
sity 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 mis-
leading, preferring the plural term nanotechnologies.
The implication for risk perception and communica-
tion work here is that the type and application of
nanotechnology proposedfor example, in health,
energy, or foodis likely to matter for the ways
people construct its risks and benets, 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 in-
tangible nature of the concept. Nanotechnology can
be described as an emerging technologyone where
signicant research and development has yet to take
place, relatively few products and processes have
come to market, and entrenched attitudes and so-
cial representations have yet to be established.
(6)
No surprise then that public familiarity with nan-
otechnologies has been found to be particularly low.
Sattereld et al.
(7)
reviewed 22 studies of nanotech-
nology perceptions conducted between 2002 and
2009 in North America, Europe, and Japan. Data
pooled from the 11 surveys, which asked a compara-
ble 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
(2571%). In the nine surveys that asked a spe-
cic question on whether judgments of benet ex-
ceed risks and vice versa, in seven of the nine a
majority saw judgments of benets outweighing
risksan overall pattern widely reported in the sur-
vey literature thus far. However, across these nine
studies on average 44% of the respondents reported
they were unsure about risks and benets, high-
lighting the potentially labile nature of such judg-
ments. Such studies are of course invaluable as base-
line measurements, anticipating subsequent work
tracking the development of nanotechnology risk
1696 Pidgeon, Harthorn, and Sattereld
perceptions into the future. Indeed, this study of nan-
otechnology risk perceptions is probably unique in
occurring prior to any major commercial or other de-
ployment. Compounding unfamiliarity, nanotechnol-
ogy is also very much an invisible technology oper-
ating at the atomic scale; hence, very few everyday
concepts or analogies are available for anchoring in-
dividuals mental models and judgments of risk and
benets.
Contemporary theory suggests that given such
constraints peoples responses to surveys are not pre-
formed, but will be constructed: rst, through en-
gagement with the survey instrument at hand and
their varied interpretations of this
(8,9)
and, second,
from the cultural and social dispositions people al-
ready 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 mean-
ings of the answers. Interpreting any particular sur-
vey nding about nanotechnology risk perceptions
therefore has to involve a considerable degree of cau-
tion and care. Surveys can, of course, be comple-
mented with more in-depth structured qualitative ev-
idence. For example, in deliberative work conducted
in parallel in the United States and the United King-
dom, Pidgeon et al.
(13)
report that people appear to
bring to bear a generic model of new technology,
something generally thought of as beneting society,
when forming their judgment of the risks and benets
of the more specic case of nanotechnology. Such
ndings help to explain why some people currently
think benets will outweigh risks despite relatively
low familiarity. More sophisticated quantitative stud-
ies, only just beginning to emerge, try to overcome
many of the (un)familiarity issues by providing par-
ticipants with extended descriptions of applications,
or information about possible risks and benets. The
challenge here is to ensure that the information pro-
vided is not too tightly framed (in any particular,
positive or negative, direction) thereby shaping judg-
ments in unintended ways.
A third issue in studying perceptions of nan-
otechnologies is that they raise wider value and
ethical questions over and above those of risk assess-
ment and toxicology. Although this is not a new is-
sue for the risk eld,
(14)
such concerns are particu-
larly acute for emerging technologies. They include
the long-term unintended consequences of nanotech-
nology developments, the means by which govern-
ments and society can exercise regulatory control,
who to trust to ensure effective governance, and re-
sponsibility 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 con-
cerns,
(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 engage-
ment.
(18,19)
The aim here is not so much to com-
municate scientic information to people about an
emerging technology and its potential risks and ben-
ets (although this goal is, of course, very important),
and certainly not to persuade people that poten-
tial 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 signicant 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 reects 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 opportu-
nity to gain structured information about them. Al-
though we have already learned much from the nan-
otechnology case about methods of upstream pub-
lic engagement, as Toumey
(25)
has remarked recently
there is much that still needs to be done. One prob-
lematic area is the possibility that the very act of tak-
ing 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 do-
ing research on nanotechnologies itself contribute to
social amplication of risk perceptions?
Corner and Pidgeon
(26)
review 18 different
nanotechnology deliberation projects conducted in
Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication 1697
Europe and North America, with several again re-
porting signicant positivity towards nanotechnolo-
gies. In one of the earliest U.S. studies, Macoubrie
(27)
found that a majority of participants felt the benets
of nanotechnologies outweighed their risks after sev-
eral hours of deliberation, although trust and a range
of other issues were also important concerns for par-
ticipants in this study as in several others. Other stud-
ies 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 indus-
try, and their ability to represent the publics interests
regarding the regulation of nanotechnologies, or the
need for the product in the rst 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. Reecting this distinction, Pid-
geon 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 nan-
otechnology risks.
THE ARTICLES IN THIS SPECIAL
COLLECTION
This Risk Analysis special series stems from in-
vited paper presentations at an international work-
shop 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 Cen-
ter since 2006 to study, among several issues, the so-
cial and ethical dynamics of nanotechnology risk per-
ceptions as they were developing over time, and as
seen through the theoretical lens of the social am-
plication of risk. The two days brought together a
range of risk perception and communication special-
ists from North America and Europe to discuss the
emerging landscape of nanotechnology risk percep-
tions research. The papers presented at the work-
shop covered a range of themes, including: gover-
nance and nanotechnology regulation; early stage
nanotechnology risk perceptions; media representa-
tions of nanotechnology and emerging mental mod-
els; labeling and risk perceptions; cultural values and
cognitions; new methods for studying nanotechnol-
ogy risk perceptions; and upstream risk communica-
tion and analytic-deliberative processes.
As a result of the workshop, authors were in-
vited 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 rst two focus upon
the question of studying risk issues with low public
familiarity. Under such circumstances an important
information source likely to impact public aware-
ness and attitudes towards nanotechnologies over
time, and potentially signal and amplify risks, is me-
dia coverage. Friedman and Egolf report on an im-
portant empirical project they have been running
for several years now to understand evolving main-
stream U.S. and U.K. media coverage of nanotech-
nologies. 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 ben-
ets. A surprising nding of their research is that
it was scientists, rather than environmental or con-
sumer 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, envi-
ronmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, Environmen-
tal 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 signif-
icant size to date, and with the potential for gener-
ating sustained media coverage; something that can
be compared, for example, with the extensive in-
ternational media coverage earlier this year of the
Fukushima nuclear disaster. These ndings again go
some way to explaining why attitude surveys over
the equivalent period
(7)
show both low familiarity,
and perceived benets as outweighing risks. The au-
thors also speculate whether this may create the con-
ditions for public distrust of nanotechnologies were
such a risk-amplifying event ever to occur with a
nanotechnology product or process.
The media ndings of Friedman and Egolf are
neatly complemented by the second article in the se-
ries, 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
1698 Pidgeon, Harthorn, and Sattereld
consciousness in any signicant way. Their study
again gives considerable insight into why the ndings
from tracking survey studies show such positive judg-
ments of nanotechnologiesconrming that a bene-
cial 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 biotech-
nology.
(34)
They also conclude that, in social ampli-
cation 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 amplication, this nding clearly war-
rants further research attention in order to better
understand the causes and (non)drivers in the nan-
otechnology case.
As nanotechnology perceptions research has be-
gun to accumulate, studies have turned from designs
that measure basic variables such as familiarity,
risk, and benets, to ones using more experimental
methods. Developing materials and narratives that
frame and contextualize nanotechnologies in partic-
ular 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 fair-
ness, vulnerability, trust, signal value) that are likely
to shape perceptions in the future. The next three
articles in the series take this approach. Conti, Sat-
tereld, and Harthorn use a major U.S. survey to
investigate how risk and benet framings interact
with the individual difference variables of perceived
vulnerability to risks and attitudes towards distribu-
tive justice. They nd that these remain signicantly
correlated with nanotechnology risk perceptions and
heightened sensitivity to risk information, even when
controlling for known demographic factors includ-
ing gender and race: the so-called white male ef-
fect.
(36)
Their data also add to a growing body of
evidence
(37,38)
that health risks associated with nan-
otechnology in food are likely to be particularly sen-
sitive 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 ques-
tion of procedural justice and fairness, as related to
the perceived behavior of risk managers. These fac-
tors explain levels of nanotechnology concern over
and above variables such as general knowledge about
science, or nanotechnology familiarity. The impor-
tant 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 scientic in-
formation, or awareness raising, to encompass mean-
ingful and widespread public discussion and dialogue
that also focus upon both distributional and proce-
dural fairness, amongst other societal questions. Al-
though this is a well-rehearsed conclusion from many
studies conducted by the risk communication re-
search 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 fth article Siegrist and Keller turn to
the important question of labeling nanotechnology
products and its role in communicating risk mes-
sages, an issue that has featured prominently in
the early debates about regulation of nanotechnolo-
gies.
(1)
Should we place explicit labels on products
containing nanotechnologies in the interests of trans-
parency and openness, or will this act as a precau-
tionary signal for people, perhaps unduly heightening
risk perceptions and inuencing preferences? In an
exploratory study they nd that labeling does indeed
increase risk and reduce benet perceptions, some-
thing 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 re-
quire further detailed research. It is also clear that
emerging technologies bring very different require-
ments for risk communicationnot least because hy-
pothetical uncertainties and data gaps, rather than
empirically observed risks, are often the dominant
considerations. The nal article in the series, by
Wiedemann, Sch utz, Spangenberg, and Krug, ad-
dresses the need for methods that support commu-
nication of the science and toxicology underlying
nanotechnology risks. They point out that the un-
certainties present with such novel risks mean that it
may be difcult even for experts to grasp the chain of
reasoning behind a particular risk assessment. To en-
hance communication they advocate a novel method-
ology, the evidence map, which allows the argu-
ment and evidence structure underlying a set of risk
assessments to be explicitly displayed, then apply-
ing this to the case of titanium dioxide nanoparticle
risks.
Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication 1699
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
Taken as a whole the articles in this special col-
lection add to a new and exciting body of litera-
ture within risk research. They also help to underline
some of the many conceptual and methodological
challenges associated with the study of risk percep-
tion and communication at the very early stage in a
technologys 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 technolo-
gies will eventually turn out, although early indica-
tions 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 as-
sumed. Of course, further convergence of techno-
logical domains, across nano-, bio-, and information
technologies, may well raise issues more contentious
than those identied by research so far. Risk commu-
nication and public engagement practices may also
have to develop new approaches in the upstream mo-
ment: to incorporate wider value questions in dia-
logue, as well as to avoid the overframing of infor-
mation provision and the construction of risk objects
where none were before. All of this points to the
need for extended empirical tracking of nanotech-
nology mental models and beliefs, methodological
development for upstream communication and dia-
logue strategies, alongside further conceptual work
on the distal factors that will shape nanotechnology
perceptions across different application domains and
over time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Tee Rogers-Hayden and Adam
Corner for their contribution to our work over the
years, the Santa Barbara workshop participants, and
Paul Slovic for his concluding remarks at that work-
shop. This article and the associated workshop was
supported by National Science Foundation Cooper-
ative Agreement #SES 0531184 to the Center for
Nanotechnology in Society at the University of Cal-
ifornia at Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB). Additional
support to Cardiff University was provided by the
Leverhulme Trust under Grant F/00 407/AG. Any
opinions, ndings, and conclusions or recommenda-
tions expressed in this material are those of the au-
thors and do not necessarily reect the views of the
NSF.
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