2.2. Government Trust, Information processing, and Flood Risk
Perception
Trust is one of the factors that affects information processing (Petty,
Priester, & Brinol, 2002). Frewer et al. (1997) used experimental
methods to test the relationship between the processing of food safety
information and the confidence of information sources. They found that
the credibility of information sources had a negligible effect on the
internalization of information, while the content of the persuasive
information or the type of disaster played a more prominent role
(Frewer, Howard, Hedderley, & Shepherd, 1997). The researchers found
that trust, as an information clue, had a significant effect on systemic
information processing. Specifically, for high-confidence information,
individuals rarely utilize detailed identification and
processing—rather, they rely more on their previous attitudes.
Contrastingly, for low-confidence information, individuals think more
about the issue (De Dreu & Beersma, 2010). Concurrently, the
researchers found that heuristic information processing was negatively
correlated with disease risk perception and nuclear risk perception, and
systematic information processing was positively correlated with risk
perception (Tortosa-Edo et al., 2014; Trumbo & McComas, 2003, 2008).
Trumbo (2002) suggested that those who systematically process risk
information might find that some problems are worth worrying about;
thus, their risk perception will be high.
Nonetheless, the prior research has some limitations. First, the
mechanism between trust and risk perception remains unclear: Do
systematic or heuristic strategies mediate the relationship between
trust and risk perception? Second, prior research was conducted with
correlational studies; therefore, the causality issue remains to be
solved.
To address these limitations, we conducted three studies. We
hypothesized that a negative relationship exists between trust in
government and risk perception (H1). Specifically, a positive
relationship exists between trust and heuristics processing (H2), and a
negative relationship exists between trust and systematic processing
(H3). Finally, heuristics processing (H4) and systematic processing (H5)
mediate the relationship between government trust and risk perception.