Author
Abstract
This research develops and tests a model of individual intentions to actively seek information about climate change. Our premise is that the individual's intention to actively seek information about climate change would determine their knowledge of and attitudes towards climate change, and this would in turn influence how they act or change their behaviors in response to that risk. Our model identifies key cognitive, affective, and situational variables drawn from research in human information behavior and risk communication. We conducted an online survey in which 212 participants in Canada and the United States responded. The results showed that the model was able to explain more than 40% of the variance in intention to seek climate change information. Social Norms, Affective Response, and Social Trust were the most important variables in influencing intention to seek climate change information. We conclude that climate change information seeking has a strong social dimension where social norms and expectations of relevant and respected others exert a major influence, and that the individual's emotional response towards the risk of climate change is more important than the individual's cognitive perception of how much information they need on climate change.
Suggested Citation
Chun Wei Choo, 2023.
"Climate change information seeking,"
Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(9), pages 1086-1099, September.
Handle:
RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:74:y:2023:i:9:p:1086-1099
DOI: 10.1002/asi.24805
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:74:y:2023:i:9:p:1086-1099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.