Mediating and Moderating Roles of Trust in Government in Effective Risk Rumor Management: A Test Case of Radiation‐Contaminated Seafood in South Korea

Hye‐Jin Paek and Thomas Hove

Risk Analysis, 2019, vol. 39, issue 12, 2653-2667

Abstract: This study has two aims: to identify effective strategies for managing false rumors about risks and to investigate the roles that basic and situational trust in government play in that process. Online experiment data were collected nationwide from 915 adults in South Korea. They were exposed to a false rumor about radiation‐contaminated seafood and were randomly assigned to one of three rumor response conditions (refutation, denial, attack the attacker). One‐way ANOVA indicated that the refutation response yielded the highest level of situational trust in government response (TGR). Results of moderated mediation models using the PROCESS Macro indicated the following. (1) The refutation response had a positive effect on TGR, and the attack response had a negative effect. (2) There were significant interaction effects between the attack response and preexisting basic trust in government (BTG) in that the attack response had a negative effect on TGR only when BTG was low. (3) TGR significantly mediated the relationship between each of the three rumor responses and two dependent variables (intentions for rumor dissemination and for unwarranted actions), but in dramatically different ways across the responses. This study provides evidence for the superior effectiveness of the refutation rumor response and identifies specific roles of trust in government in the risk rumor management process.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13377

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:39:y:2019:i:12:p:2653-2667

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().