**3. The role of attitudes and risk perception**

Public acceptance of science and technology can be examined on different levels. Commonly, the concept of attitudes provides the framework for social research in this area. Psychologists define an attitude as a tendency to evaluate a particular entity with a certain degree of favour or disfavour [11]. Risk perception might be regarded as a specific form of an attitude towards a specific entity[12].

In terms of genetically modified (GM) foods and crops, knowing the amount or extent of benefits alone is not sufficient to determine public acceptability. Consideration of the perceived risks of the technology also needs to be taken into account[13].

There has been research that suggests people tend to perceive risk-benefit as an inverse relationship[14, 15]. It has also been suggested that if perceptions of the risks related to any potential hazard or technology are sufficiently high, no amount of benefits are liable to make it acceptable[16].

The term 'risk' is further complicated by the perceptual multidimensionality of the concept. People do not perceive the risk of hazards according to a single dimension related to predicted injuries or fatalities but interpret risk according to several independent perceptual factors, termed 'dread', 'familiarity' and 'number of people exposed'[17]. Other research looking at food technologies and hazards has uncovered similar dimensions, which have been termed 'severity', 'number of people exposed' and 'unknown risks'[18].

The commonly found dimension of 'familiarity' or 'unknown risks', means that people might judge a technology to be 'risky' if they know little about it and/or they *perceive* that science and scientists know little about it[13]. Risk 'severity' has also been shown to be an important dimension to people when forming risk perceptions[19], as has perceived lack of control over preventing or early remediation of incidents[20].

For some of the general public, the perceived risks of the CSG industry and hydraulic fracturing far outweigh the benefits and, hence, there is opposition to the industry and use of the technologies associated with the industry.

Technical experts and the general community often have different attitudes towards and understandings of the risks and benefits associated with hazards[21-23]. This can create dissonance between technical and public discourse. Notwithstanding that, the general community tends to reference the judgement of experts and authorities when making risk assessments. In the absence of specific knowledge, risk assessments made by the general community may be primarily informed by the trustworthiness of the responsible authority and its sources of information[24].
