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.