Communicating Watershed Risks: Implications of Preferred Information Channels of Landowners in Select Agricultural Watersheds Within Michigan. M. Woods, G. Habron, and J. Howell, Michigan State University
In 1998, the United States Environmental Protection Agency indicated that about 40% of the nation’s surface waters are polluted to the extent that they no longer fully support their intended uses (EPA, 2000). To address this concern, water quality experts need to communicate with agricultural landowners about water quality issues such as flooding, algae growth, reduced fish habitat, bacterial contamination, excess nutrients, and soil erosion into water bodies. Risk communication – a science-based approach for communicating effectively in high concern situations – provides a set of principles and tools for meeting this challenge (Covello & Allen 1988). Yet, studies associated with these principles neglect to assess the target audience’s preference for information sources to receive these messages. While, in contrast, in consumer research, health communication studies and media research, attention has been given to the preferred information channels, and the relationship between information and channel. Therefore, the objective of this study was to better understand the preferred information channels for obtaining information regarding watershed conservation. Results indicate that respondents preferred more conventional sources of information such as newsletters (62.3%) and bulletins (52.5%) than less traditional and more innovative sources of information such as e-mail (9.8%) and World Wide Web pages (7.6%). Findings of this study should prove useful for increasing the effectiveness of reaching target audiences with risk information regarding watershed conservation. Moreover, the study findings indicate that risk communication would have differential impact depending upon the media used to communicate risks to the intended audience.
Funding for this study was provided by USDA- CSREES, Section 406.
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