Conflicted and Relevant: Systematic Processing of Information on PFAS Contamination

ABSTRACT

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination is an emerging environmental and public health crisis. Thus, it is crucial to understand public risk perception and communication behaviors surrounding this issue. Guided by the heuristic-systematic model of information processing, this study explores the impact of conflicting information and personal relevance on information insufficiency and information processing. Through an online experiment, 1,062 U.S. adults were randomly assigned to one of four conditions as part of a 2 (information type: conflicting vs. consistent) × 2 (personal relevance: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial design. Both main effect and interaction effect were detected. Specifically, information insufficiency was highest among participants in the high personal relevance and consistent information condition. Personal relevance also had a main effect on information processing. Conflicting information indirectly elevated information processing through increased information insufficiency, but only when personal relevance was low. These findings suggest the importance of providing consistent and personally relevant information related to the risk of PFAS contamination.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Using G*Power 3.1, a post hoc power analysis was conducted to determine the power of our study. For ANCOVA (main effects and interactions), f = 0.40, α = 0.05, N = 1,062, with four groups and one covariate (current knowledge), the analysis indicated that our study had a power of 1.00 to detect a large-sized effect (λ = 169.92, critical F = 2.61).

2. A readability test was conducted to ensure the four stimuli messages were similar in reading level. The Flesch Reading Ease scores (0–100 scale) were closely aligned across the four conditions: high personal relevance and conflicting information condition (37.5), low personal relevance and conflicting information condition (33.2), high personal relevance and consistent information condition (34.6), and low personal relevance and consistent information condition (29.8).

3. We controlled for current knowledge to evaluate the mediation effect of sufficiency threshold. As advised by Kahlor (2007), this technique may reduce reliability issues and mitigate ceiling effects that may arise from difference scores.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.