Government Trust,Information Processing And Perception Of Flood Risk

Nowadays, flood threat is one of the major disasters in our society. In the issue of prevention and management of flood risk, people's risk perception is one of the important determinants. A better understanding of what factors influence flood risk perception and how these factors influence risk perception, could provide us very important proposes for social management, and could enrich the theory of risk perception. According to some researchers, trust will decrease people's risk perception. While, on the other hand, few researchers argues that the relationship between trust and risk perception is weak. Can trust reduce risk perception? And what is mechanism between them?According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, individuals will use one or both modes of information processing when they evaluate risk information, and trust will affect the information processing mode that individuals adopt, then they will have different risk perception. In order to test this hypothesis, three studies were conducted to examine the relationships of the three variables.In order to explore whether trust affects risk perception, the questionnaire of trust,risk perception were conducted online, and final, 330 participants finished completely.The results of study 1 (N=330) showed that government trust was negatively related to the perception of flood risk.Based on the findings of study 1, we explored the mediator role of information processing. By constructing a structured equation models, study 2 (N=863) found that higher trust on government led more heuristic information processing, subsequently,lower flood risk perception. Taken together, the present research provided support for the relation between trust and risk perception in the context of flood, and detected mediator role of information processing.In order to provide more evidence about the relationship among trust, information processing and risk perception, we conducted study 3. Within study 3, 160 college students were randomly arranged into two treatment groups, priming them with higher(n=85) or lower(n=75) government trust, to test the mediate model in study 2. And the data of this study showed the same results of study 2.Finally, the theoretical and practical implications for government management were discussed.