Incitament för investering i riskreduktion

Sammanfattning: Protection of critical infrastructure is an important part of risk management for society. This protection could consist of investments in emergency management capability, which can act as a reduction of the consequences from an event. Estimations of the current emergency management capability level is called capability assessments. As for now, there is a skewed incentive structure for the responsibility for actors within critical societal functions if something happens that will affect the function. There is a limit of how much the actor will have to pay if the critical function is affected. This study is a microworld experiment in which the impact of the aforementioned variables capability assessments and economic incentives on decision making is examined. The participants in this study is faced with different decision-making scenarios in a computer game, acting as a manager of a fictive energy company, that is vulnerable to storms. This experimental setup allows them to make dynamic decisions that will affect the game and hence their decision-making environment. The results show that both capability assessments and incentives has a statistically significant impact upon decision making concerning critical infrastructure and on the total consequences of an event. This experiment also shows that there is an interaction effect between the two variables.