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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. riskinformation 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 even more complex role than initially anticipated. These norms may be a powerful predictor of seeking and processing when individuals face impersonal risks.

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Abstract:In an effort to better understand the ways in which risk messages can indirectly affect risk-related behaviors, this review explores the links between such messages and information seeking and processing. The narrative first offers a brief look at the literature that shores up salient concepts, then moves to a model of Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP), constructed by Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999), which seeks to organize those factors into a coherent framework. The RISP model, thus, serves as a crossroads for selected concepts synthesized from Eagly and Chaiken's (1993) Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) of information processing, Ajzen's (1988) Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and other bodies of research in communication and risk perception. Of particular interest is the extent to which the model can accommodate reactions to both personal risks and risks to persons and objects other than oneself. This last NOT THE PUBLISHED VERSION; this is the author's final, peer-reviewed manuscript. The published version may be accessed by following the link in the citation at the bottom of the page. 2 domain is particularly important to the development of policy in arenas such as public health and climate change. This review explores the theoretical underpinnings of the RISP model, then summarizes a decade of studies that have examined a subset of RISP variables most closely related to information seeking and processing: channel beliefs, perceived information gathering capacity, and two motivation variables, information sufficiency and informational subjective norms. Finally, the authors explore the research potential of both the model and of efforts to track the role of information in risk perceptions and behavior change.