What, Me Worry? The Role of Affect in Information Seeking and Avoidance

Yang, Janet Z.; Kahlor, Lee Ann

doi:10.1177/1075547012441873

Cited by 250 publications

(292 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The second section asked questions on information seeking behavior and its possible determinants. Some items (such as information seeking behavior [2,3]; information need [13]; perceived information gathering capacity [3]; informational subjective norms [1,3,38]; negative affective responses [2,13,38]; risk perception [43]) were measured on the basis of previous empirical studies, and current risk knowledge which was newly developed. The exact formulation of the items is presented in Table 1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Negative affective responses lead to the awareness of a lack of risk knowledge [13,37], and subsequently, greater perceived information need [3,6,7,8,9,11,16,17], which ultimately prompts more active seeking behavior for risk information [3,4,6,8,13,16,17,19]. Many previous studies have also emphasized the negative affect; however, positive affective responses were also explored by Yang and Kahlor [38], and found that positive emotion could also be a direct determinant of risk information seeking behavior [39]. …”

Section: Theoretical Background and Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Zhai

Zhou

et al. 2017

IJERPH

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Efficient risk communication is a vital way to reduce the vulnerability of individuals when facing emergency risks, especially regarding earthquakes. Efficient risk communication aims at improving the supply of risk information and fulfilling the need for risk information by individuals. Therefore, an investigation into individual-level information seeking behavior within earthquake risk contexts is very important for improved earthquake risk communication. However, at present there are very few studies that have explored the behavior of individuals seeking earthquake risk information. Under the guidance of the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model as well as relevant practical findings using the structural equation model, this study attempts to explore the main determinants of an individual’s earthquake risk information seeking behavior, and to validate the mediator effect of information need during the seeking process. A questionnaire-based survey of 918 valid respondents in Songyuan, China, who had been hit by a small earthquake swarm, was used to provide practical evidence for this study. Results indicated that information need played a noteworthy role in the earthquake risk information seeking process, and was detected both as an immediate predictor and as a mediator. Informational subjective norms drive the seeking behavior on earthquake risk information through both direct and indirect approaches. Perceived information gathering capacity, negative affective responses and risk perception have an indirect effect on earthquake risk information seeking behavior via information need. The implications for theory and practice regarding risk communication are discussed and concluded.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Background and Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Zhai

Zhou

et al. 2017

IJERPH

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“…Yang and Kahlor [102] proposed that when people perceive that others expect them to know about environmental issues, they might purposely present themselves as knowing a lot about this issue. Thus, people who act according to social norms might have paid more attention to environmental information and actually developed a greater knowledge base.…”

Section: Environmental Knowledge (Ek)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model to Investigate Purchase Intention of Green Products among Thai Consumers

2016

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Green products are among the widely used products worldwide due to their environmental benefits. However, information on the consumers' purchase intention towards green products in developing countries, such as Thailand, is lacking. This study aims to investigate Thai consumers who are aged over 18 years, and whose base education is high school, on purchase intention for green products by using an extended framework of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). We derived and examined the model through structural equation modeling in a sample of 483 respondents in Thailand. The findings of this model indicated that consumer attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control have significant positive influences on the purchase intention for green products. Furthermore, our results indicated that environmental concerns have a significant effect on attitude, perceived behavioral control and purchase intention for green products, but subjective norm. Moreover, environmental knowledge had no significant effect on the purchase intention for green products. Instead, it had a distinct indirect effect through attitude towards purchasing green products, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The findings from this study contribute to improving the understanding of intention to purchase green products, which could play a major role towards sustainable consumption.

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“…Positive emotions about climate change were not related to behavioural intentions to seek out information about climate change. In contrast, individuals who reported feeling concerned, worried and anxious about climate change were less likely to avoid information about climate change, and more likely seek out such information (Yang and Kahlor 2012). Beattie et al (2010) had found that experimental participants do fixate on the carbon footprint of specific products like low energy light bulbs, where, of course, the information about carbon footprint is positive, rather than on the carbon footprint of products where the information is going to be obviously higher (like detergent).…”

Section: Optimism and Cognitive Processingmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Attentional bias has been found to extend to the self-selection of information. One survey found that having positive or negative emotions about climate change was differentially related to information-seeking and avoidance behaviours (Yang and Kahlor 2012). People who felt excited, hopeful and happy about climate change were more likely to avoid or ignore information about climate change.…”

Section: Optimism and Cognitive Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Staying over-optimistic about the future: Uncovering attentional biases to climate change messages

et al. 2017

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For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: usir@salford.ac.uk. AbstractThere is considerable concern that the public are not getting the message about climate change. One possible explanation is 'optimism bias', where individuals overestimate the likelihood of positive events happening to them and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. Evidence from behavioural neuroscience suggest that this bias is underpinned by selective information processing, specifically through a reduced level of neural coding of undesirable information, and an unconscious tendency for optimists to avoid fixating negative information. Here we test how this bias in attention could relate to the processing of climate change messages. Using eye tracking, we found that level of dispositional optimism affected visual fixations on climate change messages. Optimists spent less time (overall dwell time) attending to any arguments about climate changes (either 'for' or 'against') with substantially shorter individual fixations on aspects of arguments for climate change, i.e. those that reflect the scientific consensus but are bad news. We also found that when asked to summarise what they had read, non-optimists were more likely to frame their recall in terms of the arguments 'for' climate change; optimists were significantly more likely to frame it in terms of a debate between two opposing positions. Those highest in dispositional optimism seemeed to have the strongest and most pronounced level of optimism bias when it came to estimating the probability of being personally affected by climate change. We discuss the importance of overcoming this cognitive bias to develop more effective strategies for communicating about climate change.

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What, Me Worry? The Role of Affect in Information Seeking and Avoidance

Cited by 250 publications

References 36 publications

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

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

Application of the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model to Investigate Purchase Intention of Green Products among Thai Consumers

Staying over-optimistic about the future: Uncovering attentional biases to climate change messages

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