Audience Seeking and Processing of Information about Risks to the Great Lakes Ecosystem. R. J. Griffin, College of Communication, Marquette University, P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881; S. Dunwoody, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706; and K. Neuwirth and J. Geise, Dept. of Communication ML184, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH 45221
This study applies a model of risk communication to audience seeking and processing of information about risks to the Great Lakes ecosystem. Adapting Eagly and Chaiken’s heuristic-systematic theory, it was proposed that an individual’s drive for information sufficiency and his/her information processing capacity will result in systematic (more thorough) processing of information about risks to the Great Lakes ecosystem, especially as compared to heuristic (more superficial) processing efforts. A person’s beliefs about information-carrying channels were also expected to affect seeking and processing. It was proposed that information sufficiency would be driven by affective response to the Lakes and/or by subjective norms (SN) for information seeking (i.e., a person’s belief that relevant others think he/she should keep up-to-date on information about risks to the Great Lakes ecosystem). Data were gathered as part of a sample survey of adult residents of two Great Lakes cities. Results show that SN is associated with higher information sufficiency drives, as are ecological attitudes. Affective response is unrelated. Furthermore, higher sufficiency drives are related positively to the adoption of systematic information processing strategies and negatively to the use of heuristic strategies to gather information about risks to the Great Lakes ecosystem. Channel beliefs are also related to the processing strategies employed, but capacity is not.
Work supported in whole or in part by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Go to . . .