Individuals’ Perception and Processing of Risk Information: Exploratory Evidence from Germany

This paper presents a first exploratory study to analyze private investors’ perceptions regarding risk reporting. With the help of think-aloud protocols, we gain insight into how and to what extent readers perceive risk information of a German savings bank, which specific information cues are relevant for informed judgment and decision-making, and whether these assessments are correct in relation to an expert benchmark. The results reveal that, during the reading process, the perceived information broadly coincides with the structure of the risk report considered. Only little information is indeed relevant. Information about the risk exposure is more relevant than information about the risk management system for the participants’ judgments and decisions, but each of them play an important role. On average, the participants’ assessments are actually in line with the expert benchmark and can therefore be considered correct–even the information cues mentioned as relevant are similar. These results provide a first indication of preferable approaches to risk reporting from the addressees’ point of view.