Perceived Relational Risk and Perceived Situational Risk: Scale Development

Abstract

Interactions with technology are a significant part of daily life, both at home and at work. Understanding how to support successful human-technology interaction is essential for Engineering Psychology. Perceived relational and situational risk are key components to understanding interactions with technologies including adoption, trust, and use. However, perceived risk was only recently separated into these two distinct types: relational and situational. In addition, prior measures of perceived risk focus on hazards, not interactions with technology or automation. The goal of this dissertation was to develop and validate scales of perceived relational risk and perceived situational risk. These scales built on previous work exploring perceived risk and incorporated scale items related to affect, probability, severity, and domains. Evaluations of internal reliability, construct validity, and test-retest reliability were conducted for both scales. The items for both scales had excellent internal reliability, acceptable test-retest reliability, and support for construct validity. After determining the validity of the items, items were selected to create the final scales. These scales allow future researchers to rigorously and accurately study how perceived relational risk and perceived situational risk affect with trust, each other, and technology use.