After the Flood

Abstract

In an effort to understand what motivates people to attend to information about flood risks, this study applies the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model to explore how local residents responded to damaging river flooding in the Milwaukee area. The results indicate that anger at managing agencies was associated with the desire for information and active information seeking and processing, as well as with greater risk judgment of harm from future flooding, greater sense of personal efficacy, lower institutional trust, and causal attributions for flood losses as being due to poor government management.

Information sufficiency and attribution of responsibility: predicting support for climate change policy and pro-environmental behavior

“…Individuals who are angered by agencies' lack of response to a risk event are likely to seek out information by themselves and process the information systematically to safeguard their personal interest. For instance, residents of an urban watershed who felt angry at local management agencies were more likely to seek risk information about flooding and process the information systematically (Griffin et al 2008). Thus, negative affect not only elevates information insufficiency (H4), but it can also motivate information processing directly (H5).…”

“…The RISP model has demonstrated its utility in explicating risk information seeking and processing related to a variety of environmental issues such as ecological health of the Great Lakes (Kahlor et al 2003), urban watersheds (Griffin et al 2008), and climate change (Kahlor 2007). The central premise of the model is that risk information processing is motivated by information insufficiency, which is one's perceived need for risk information while taking into account his or her existing knowledge about the risk issue.…”

Insight into the Earthquake Risk Information Seeking Behavior of the Victims: Evidence from Songyuan, China

“…Nonetheless, only a limited number of studies have aimed to explain what prompts individuals to engage in and seek personally relevant risk information. Due to this gap in the literature, a new research direction focusing on individual-level risk information seeking behavior has been developed in risk communication research [2,3,4,5], especially related to public health risks. Some models have been proposed to explain the behavior of individuals seeking risk information.…”

“…For instance, the consumption risk of contaminated fish [7,8,9]; municipal drinking water polluted by chemicals and organisms risk [7,8,9,10,11]; use of renewable energy sources and ecological security [8,9,12]; hazardous industrial risk and hazard waste transportation [2,13]; flood risks [3,14,15]; climate change [16]; and global warming [17]. In these studies, the RISP model has been constantly improved; however, the role of information need in the seeking process has not been fully explored.…”

Making sense of food risk information : the case of organic food

“…Information insufficiency is the core of the RISP-model and can be described as the gap between perceived knowledge and an information sufficiency threshold. If individuals believe that they do not have enough information, they will be motivated to gain information, and hence start to search for it (Griffin, Dunwoody, & Neuwirth, 1999;Griffin et al, 2008;Kahlor, 2010).…”