STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF NATIONAL RISK PERCEPTIONS IN BULGARIA AND CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE (2023-2026): IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AGRI-FOOD SECTOR

Abstract

Risk perception is a subject of economic analysis in its own right, insofar as it influences the allocation of attention and resources regardless of the actual degree of risk exposure. The aim of the study is to identify the structure and dynamics of national risk perceptions in Bulgaria and seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and to relate them to the climate exposure of the agri-food sector. The tasks include tracking global trends by semantic groups, extracting and systematising national data, identifying the distinctive features of the Bulgarian structure, and correlating it with available assessments of the economic burden and climate exposure of agricultureThe applied methodology uses two sources from four consecutive editions of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report for the period 2023‑2026: the Global Risks Perception Survey for the global picture and the Executive Opinion Survey for the national level. The data were extracted from the text versions of the reports and cross-checked line by line against the original appendices. To ensure comparability given the varying number of risks, an average normalised ranking by group was used. The results reveal two consistent trends for Bulgaria: economic risk ranks first in all four editions, whilst climate risk is absent from the top five throughout the entire period. The only environmental concern is pollution, which ranks fifth in 2025. A comparison with climate exposure estimates reveals a discrepancy: agriculture accounts for 1.8% of gross domestic product, whilst drought causes over half of the losses suffered by the European agricultural sector, with insurance cover extending to 20% of the country’s land area.