The Effect of Narrative Visualizations on Public Risk Perception of Magnetic Fields Emanating from High Voltage Power Lines – and the Role of Anxiety

Abstract

People’s acceptance level for high voltage power lines (HVPL) is generally low. Among others, they suspect potential health risks arising from magnetic fields (MF) associated with HVPL, although there are only very few, scientifically proven health risks originating from them. It is therefore crucial to inform the public about this misconception. Studies in risk communication have already tested whether certain presentation formats are perceived as easier to understand than others. The results are inconclusive. A special problem is that the mere provision of information often leads to an increase in risk perception, regardless of the content. Thus, our study focuses on recipients’ risk perception rather than on the understandability of information. We ask whether the degree of narrative visualizations that a presentation format contains has an impact on citizens’ risk perception of HPVL. We conducted an experimental study of 274 participants (representative of the German population) to test three different presentation formats (video, infographic, diagram). It emerged that presentation formats involving strong narrativity and visualization (e.g., video) led to lower risk perception than presentation formats involving less narrativity and visualization (e.g., diagram). Overall, our results also indicate that some people exhibit increased risk perception after reception of the stimuli. Therefore, we further investigated whether the personality traits skepticism and anxiety might affect recipients’ risk perception. In the latter case, this proved to be true. Our study sheds light on how information campaigns on HVPL and MF might reduce risk perception and which individual traits might prove a hindrance.