No abstract

In 2011, the Chinese government launched a disaster mitigation and preparedness program called the Resettlement of South Shaanxi (RSS). Due to the wide geographical scope and complex interests, the possibility of conflicts was increased during and after resettlement. Efficient risk communication improves the supply of information about risks and meets the risk-related information needs of individuals. Using the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model, this research applied a structural equation model and survey with a structured questionnaire to study ways to improve risk communication in disaster resettlement. A total of 616 valid questionnaires were provided by study respondents in resettlement sites in Ziyang County, Ankang City, Shaanxi Province. The results indicated the following: (1) the public’s information seeking behavior relies more on village committees and village officials than other channels. Emerging information channels, such as Weibo and WeChat (social media applications in China), do not play leading roles in disseminating risk information. (2) There are differences between the information channels used by residents and the channels that residents believe the most. (3) Relevant channel beliefs, information sufficiency, perceived hazard characteristics, and self-efficacy directly influence risk information seeking behavior. However, the capacity to gather information has non-significant direct influences on information seeking behavior. (4) Perceived hazard characteristics and self-efficacy drive risk information seeking behavior in both direct and indirect ways through information sufficiency.

With the purpose of limiting the drastically increasing quantity of travel volumes and the sustainability of urban traffic systems, many cities have implemented urban traffic restriction (UTR) policies. However, insufficient stakeholder involvement in UTR policy assessment often leads to a lack of social and political support, in addition to a lack of acceptability with respect to policy implementation. In this background, participatory system dynamics modeling (PSDM) is presented as a methodology to engage stakeholders in UTR policy assessment. By the proposed methodology, a comprehensive case study of UTR policy in the city of Xi’an was illustrated. Based on the assessment results, the leverage point influencing the performance of the UTR policy was identified and discussed, with different policy scenarios simulated and tested. The simulation results show that developing public transportation while implementing UTR policy was indicated as the most reasonable solution at the present stage, and the annual growth rate of private cars should be monitored in the future. The results confirmed that the PSDM methodology can facilitate the system thinking of stakeholders, which is important to reach consensus-based assessment results and to enhance the social support for UTR policy.

AI thermal facial recognition (AITFR) has been rapidly applied globally in the fight against Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). However, AITFR has also been accompanied by a controversy regarding whether the public accepts it. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the acceptance of AITFR during the COVID‐19 crisis. Drawing upon the theory of acceptable risk and Siegrist's causal model of public acceptance (PA), we built a combined psychological model that included the perceived severity of COVID‐19 (PSC) to describe the influencing factors and pathways of AITFR acceptance. This model was verified through a survey conducted in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, China, which collected 754 valid questionnaires. The results show that (1) COVID‐19 provides various application scenarios for AI‐related technologies. However, the respondents’ trust in AITFR was found to be very low. Additionally, the public appeared concerned about the privacy disclosure issue and the accuracy of the AITFR algorithm. (2) The PSC, social trust (ST), and perceived benefit (PB) were found to directly affect AITFR acceptance. (3) The PSC was found to have a significant positive effect on perceived risk (PR). PR was found to have no significant effect on PA, which is inconsistent with the findings of previous studies. (4) The PB were found to be a stronger mediator of the indirect effect of the PSC on ST induced by AITFR acceptance.