Yan Cao’s research while affiliated with William Penn University and other places

The mental models approach, a leading strategy to develop risk communications, involves a time- and labor-intensive interview process and a lengthy questionnaire to elicit group-level risk perceptions. We propose that a similarity ratings approach for structural knowledge elicitation can be adopted to assist the risk mental models approach. The LinkIT game, inspired by games with a purpose (GWAP) technology, is a ludic elicitation tool designed to elicit group understanding of the relations between risk factors in a more enjoyable and productive manner when compared to traditional approaches. That is, consistent with the idea of ludic elicitation, LinkIT was designed to make the elicitation process fun and enjoyable in the hopes of increasing participation and data quality in risk studies. Like the mental models approach, the group mental model obtained via the LinkIT game can hence be generated and represented in a form of influence diagrams. In order to examine the external validity of LinkIT, we conducted a study to compare its performance with respect to a more conventional questionnaire-driven approach. Data analysis results conclude that the two group mental models elicited from the two approaches are similar to an extent. Yet, LinkIT was more productive and enjoyable than the questionnaire. However, participants commented that the current game has some usability concerns. This presentation summarizes the design and evaluation of the LinkIT game and suggests areas for future work.

This paper introduces the concept of participatory risk management (PRM), the outsourcing of parts of the risk management process to a wide audience of participants, whether from communities affected by risk or netizens willing to lend a helping (analytic) hand. PRM consists of six parts that closely follows the ISO31000 risk management framework: tasking and requirements, participatory risk identification, participatory risk analysis, participatory risk evaluation, participatory risk mitigation and communication. Each phase leverages one or more modern crowdsourcing concepts, such as participatory sensing, human computation, and games with a purpose. A potential PRM gaming system for incentivising community risk management through rewarding play is presented as an example application of PRM.

We describe a scientific casual browser game called LinkIT for eliciting societal risk perceptions in the form of mental models represented as influence diagrams. Given this knowledge, we can highlight similarities and differences across demographic groups as well as compare individual responses with expert models. These comparisons inform how risk should be best communicated to resolve knowledge gaps and misperceptions. Here we introduce the LinkIT concept, present preliminary results and propose future work.