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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Seeking And Processing Information About Impersonal Risk, Lee Ann Kahlor, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert Griffin, Kurt Neuwirth
Seeking And Processing Information About Impersonal Risk, Lee Ann Kahlor, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert Griffin, Kurt Neuwirth
Robert Griffin
Attempts to model risk response tend to focus on risks that pose a direct personal threat. This study examined the applicability of one risk response model to impersonal risks—risks that threaten something other than the self, in this case, the environment. This study utilized a section of the Griffin et al. risk-information seeking and processing model, which depicts relationships between informational subjective norms and information seeking and processing as being mediated by perceptions of information insufficiency. The results indicate that while those relationships do hold for impersonal risk, informational subjective norms (perceived social pressure to be informed) may play an …
Predicting Knowledge Complexity In The Wake Of An Environmental Risk, Lee Ann Kahlor, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert Griffin
Predicting Knowledge Complexity In The Wake Of An Environmental Risk, Lee Ann Kahlor, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert Griffin
Robert Griffin
In 1993, the parasite cryptosporidium infested the Milwaukee-area drinking supply and sickened some 400,000 people. This study uses survey data gathered from 610 residents in the wake of that outbreak to look at predictors of the complexity of people’s understanding of two causal components of the outbreak: (1) how the parasite got into the water and (2) how it caused illness in the human body. Analysis of open-ended data indicated that, consistent with the predictors used in the knowledge gap literature, indicators of socioeconomic status are significant predictors of differences in explanatory complexity. Also, consistent with the literature on motivation …