3.2. Results
People’s trust in the government can significantly predict their risk perception (b = -0.25, p < .01). These analyses indicated that government trust is negatively correlated with risk perception. This is consistent with previous results in the fields of food risk perception (e.g., Lu, Xie, & Xiong, 2015). While, the mechanism behind trust and risk perception still unclear. In study 2, we further tested the relationship between government trust and risk perception and the mechanism behind them.
STUDY 2
Study 2 explores the mechanism behind why trust and risk perception are negatively correlated. We hypothesized that information processing methods mediate the effect of government trust on risk perception (H2–H5).