ABSTRACT
Perception of flood hazard risk and people’s trust in the government
have vital influences on risk communication. We conducted three studies
to examine the relation and mechanism of trust and flood hazard risk
perception. In Study 1, we found that people’s risk perception and
government trust were significantly negatively correlated. In Studies 2
and 3, using correlational and experimental methods, we found that the
higher the public’s trust in the government, the more they used
heuristics to process risk information, and their risk perception was
lower than the group with low trust in the government. Our results
suggest that government trust can influence risk perception via
heuristics.
Keywords : government trust, information processing, perception of
flood hazard risk