Celebrating Success: Irene Mussio, Sue Chilton, Jytte Seested Nielsen and Darren Duxbury

Congratulations to Irene Mussio, Sue Chilton, Jytte Seested Nielsen and Daren Duxbury, whose paper “A risk-risk trade-off assessment of climate-induced mortality risk changes“ has been published in Risk Analysis: An International Journal.

Risk Analysis: An International Journal is the official journal of the Society for Risk Analysis, is ranked among the top 10 journals in the ISI Journal Citation Reports under the social sciences, mathematical methods category, and provides a focal point for new developments in the field of risk analysis.  The journal has an Impact factor (2021) of 4.302.

There is a growing consensus that the impact of climate change on human health needs to be accounted for in policy, having been laid out as a priority for the United Nations COP26 conference.  In Europe, the United Kingdom (UK) will be one of the worst affected countries by climate change and in particular by extreme weather events (floods and heatwaves), with the country facing a 10% increase in rainfall each year by 2100, as well as more heavy rainfall events like the ones experienced in 2019 and 2020 (IPCC, 2014, 2021). Extreme heat events and longer warm spells will become commonplace, with the UK becoming wetter, warmer and sunnier than in the 20th century (Kendon et al., 2022). The impacts of extreme weather events will affect not only terrestrial and marine ecosystems, but also population health, livelihoods, local and regional economies.

In the paper we focus on extreme weather-induced mortality risks in the UK and estimate preferences for mortality risk changes by applying the risk-risk trade-off (RRTO) approach.  We find evidence of an extreme weather event fatality risk premium of 1.2-1.6 (relative to traffic accident fatality risks) based on the preferences of a representative sample of the UK. Using the current UK-based traffic accident VSL of £2.14m, this translates into an extreme weather event VSL range of £2.52 to £3.41 million. The psychological distance to climate change is the main driver of the risk premium, with those psychologically close to climate change weighing reducing extreme weather event mortality risks up to 1.8 times more than reducing traffic accident mortality risks.

The findings and policy implications in the paper are timely, especially in light of the first heat-health alert of the year issued by the Met Office and UK Health Security Agency.

Abstract

The impact of climate change on human health was identified as a priority for the UN COP26 conference. In this paper, we consider climate-induced changes to mortality risks and how to incorporate these formally in the policy appraisal process. In the UK, the Value of Statistical Life (VSL) is used to monetarise the benefits of policies to reduce mortality risks but it remains an open, empirical question as to whether the current VSL (£2.14 million per fatality prevented, December 2021 values) for traffic accidents should be applied in other contexts without any modification and particularly for extreme weather event fatalities. Using a representative sample of the UK population, we aim to estimate and better understand the trade-offs people make when comparing mortality risks, drawing on psychological insights from Construal Level and Regulatory Focus theories. We design a stated preference survey using a relative valuation framework with non-monetary, risk-risk trade-off questions between extreme weather event and traffic accident mortality risks. We find evidence of an extreme weather event risk premium of 1.2 – 1.6 (relative to traffic accident mortality risks, and implying a climate-related VSL of £2.52 to £3.41 million). We also find that participants who are psychologically close to climate change (based on Construal Level Theory), weigh reducing extreme weather event mortality risks almost two times that of reducing traffic accident mortality risks.