Children’s dynamic risk management – a comprehensive approach to children’s risk willingness, risk assessment, and risk handling
Rasmus Kleppe, Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, Ole Johan Sando, Mariana Brussoni
Abstract
Theoretical conceptualizations to facilitate understanding of how children manage risk-taking and risky play in their everyday lives are limited. We propose that there are emotional, cognitive and physical processes at work when a child faces a risk and that these processes can be termed risk willingness, risk assessment, and risk handling, respectively. In real-world risky situations, these processes overlap, interlink, and vary across individual and contextual factors. However, combined, they can be seen as a comprehensive expression of children’s risk management. The processes must also be understood within the cultural, social, and environmental contexts of the risk. We aim to unify these concepts within a comprehensive model that can be tested and applied in empirical studies and used to understand children’s risk-taking in general, as well as the implications of increasingly risk-deprived childhoods.