A Taxonomy of Situations within the Context of Risk Analysis

Prediction of deliberate human decisions with potential negative impact on others would have great practical and scientific utility. The Conflicting Incentives Risk Analysis (CIRA) method defines risk as a result of misaligned incentives between various stakeholders. The method makes predictions based on action desirability from the perspective of the individual in the position to implement the action. Therefore, in order to assess action desirability it is necessary to characterize stakeholders and their perceptions about the situation as well. While classification systems and taxonomies related to stakeholder attributes are well-established, systematic classifications of situational aspects are underdeveloped in the literature. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to present a classification of situational variables in the form of a taxonomy capturing key situational features that exert influence on decision-makers. The development of the taxonomy begins with mapping two major types of risks distinguished in the CIRA method to relevant psychological constructs. The principled, systematic development of dilemmas enabled by the taxonomy allows researchers to investigate the predictability of stakeholder behavior which may result in various types of risks. The taxonomy is extensible, thus additional concepts and variables can be included depending on the needs of the analysis and according to future developments within the fields of psychology and information security.