Organic salmon farming: risk perceptions, decision heuristics and the absence of environmental accounting

Decision makers' risk perception is identified as important for considering what factors are thought to be legitimate/illegitimate and powerful/weak in the decision making process. Unless risks are considered 'real' by the decision makers then the associated costs/benefits of doing or not doing something are not going to figure in the decision heuristics, regardless of the nature of their calculation. Environmental accounting could play a part, not necessarily at the individual farm level, but as part of a reflexive process in reconstructing the underlying knowledge of the social, environmental and economic risks of salmon farming as a whole.