The Effects of Emergency Preparedness Communication on People’s Trust, Emotions, and Acceptance of a Nuclear Power Plant

ABSTRACT

The current study employed an experiment (N = 370) to investigate the effects of emergency preparedness communication on people’s trust, emotions and supportive attitudes toward a nuclear power plant. This study considered trust and emotions as mediators and knowledge as a moderator to explain the effect of emergency preparedness communication on individuals’ acceptance of a nuclear power plant. The results showed that emergency preparedness communication enhanced participants’ trust toward a nuclear power plant, while emergency preparedness information increased audiences’ negative emotions and decreased their positive emotions. Trust and emotions cancelled out their effects on acceptance of a nuclear power plant. The findings provide both scholarly and practical implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk communication
• trust
• acceptance
• emergency preparedness
• nuclear power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tsuyoshi Oshita http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8686-4341