Part I RisksRisks
6.4 Developing an effective risk communication strategy
In the case of communication about food-handling practices, the ultimate goal is to improve public health through persuading consumers to adopt more appropriate domestic hygiene practices. As a consequence, communicators need to understand how the public perceives risk and hazards to facilitate the structuring of risk-related messages in such a way that consumers change their attitudes about the risks. If we adopt the social psychological idea that attitudes are the proximal causes for behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), changing attitudes should also lead to changes in the risky behaviour. Therefore, the various models of attitude change may provide insights into how this may be accomplished. In persuasion research it was noted that to process the supplied information as fully as possible, a lot of cognitive effort is required (Cacioppo and Petty, 1982). It was found that when not much cognitive effort was applied to processing the information, attitudes changed in a different way from when more effort was made.
6.4.1 Dual-process models
This realisation lead to the construction of dual-processing models of persuasion, such as the elaboration likelihood model (Cacioppo et al., 1986).
The elaboration likelihood model posits that long-term attitude change will occur only if the person receiving the message carefully and thoughtfully assesses its arguments, following what is described as the central route to information processing. When there is no motivation or cognitive ability to process the information, the communication will not be processed in such an elaborate way and will follow a peripheral route to processing. The peripheral 108 Handbook of hygiene control in the food industry
route to processing is based on an individual assessing a cognitive or affective (emotional) cue associated with the persuasive message. This permits them to decide whether and how to process the information, and whether and how the arguments contained in the information can be assessed as to their merits, without recourse to complex processing of the information (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). If an attitude change is the consequence of such peripheral processing, it is likely to result in temporary attitude shifts that are also more susceptible to counter-persuasion, leading to less predictable behaviour.
A central theme in all dual-process theories is that elaborate processing of all arguments is relatively costly in cognitive resources, leading to, for example, fatigue. So the main aim of these models is to give an idea when these costly processes are applied and when and how the simpler peripheral solutions are conducted. The elaboration likelihood model assumes that someone wants to base decisions on a solution that is as good as possible (accuracy motivation), therefore it assumes that consumers embrace the central route to persuasion unless the motivational or ability demands are not met (Petty and Wegener, 1999). Another dual-process model, the heuristic systematic model (Chen and Chaiken, 1999), is very similar but has two major differences. Firstly, it assumes the central route (or systematic processing as Chen and Chaiken name it) will not be chosen when heuristics (peripheral processes) lead to satisfactory solutions.
This sparing use of cognitive resources is often labelled as the cognitive miser assumption. Although the assumptions underlying the selection of the processes are different, both models similarly define the effect of motivation and availability of cognitive resources on the processing of information.
A second more structural difference lies in the assumption of the heuristic systematic model that heuristics are used throughout the process unless there is a need for cognition; which means that in reality often a mix of heuristic and systematic processes occurs. The elaboration likelihood model, on the other hand, assumes that processing is heuristic only when cognitive processing is not possible at all, so that either the central or the peripheral route to attitude change is taken. It should be noted that heuristic cues can lead to the central processing of information, thus accounting for a sequential mix of the processing modes (Petty and Wegener, 1999).
For risk communication about hygiene-related food safety issues to be successful in the long run, it would be best to design the communication strategy in such a way that it enforces the central or systematic process to run its course.
So the question of risk communication with regard to the dual process approach is: what sort of information should be given, or in what way should the information be supplied to influence the selection of either the central or the peripheral mode of information processing by the message receiver?
6.4.2 Communicating information following the dual-process approach If information is highly relevant to the person receiving the information, motivation to process this information elaborately is likely to be high (Fazio and Consumer perceptions of risks from food 109
Towles-Schwein, 1999). However to conform to availability of resources demand, the arguments contained in the message need to be salient and of high quality, otherwise the consumer might want to take care of the arguments but cannot (Wood et al., 1985; Areni, 2003). The quality of arguments is shown to be a necessary precondition to process information if the targeted consumer is motivated to process information following the central route. Therefore whenever risks are communicated, considerable care should be taken to design these high quality arguments.
Motivating consumers to follow the central route of processing
In this chapter we will focus on motivation of consumers rather than on the effect of message quality. So whenever there is a high relevance of the information and the information itself is well structured, the arguments will be weighed and used by the consumer. So to achieve the central processing of information and the accompanying lasting attitude change, it would be useful to be able to motivate consumers and, of course, to know how to supply the information. One way of motivating people to process information is by increasing their level of fear (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983). Although research with fear as motivator has been conducted, in general little research on the relation between emotions and persuasion attempts following dual-process models has been conducted. The use of fear might lead to some unforeseen side effects, as we will discuss at the end of the following section on peripheral processing of information.
Peripheral processing of information
When the information is of low relevance, there is no intrinsic motivation to process the arguments elaborately. McGuire (1985) has reported that the extent to which a source is perceived to possess expertise may act as a cue that increases the likelihood of persuasion occurring. In these cases the impact of the arguments are probably mediated by peripheral cues. Factors such as expertise may act as such a referential cue as to the quality of the arguments. So if the information is derived from an expert source, and the conclusions are taken into account without going into the actual arguments, a change in attitude might follow. Trust in the information source providing the information may also act as a peripheral cue as to the merits of the messages contained (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). There is, however, some evidence that, in the case of communication about microbial food safety, information source characteristics are less influential than message relevance in influencing risk perceptions associated with food poisoning (Frewer et al., 1997).
Another process that follows peripheral rather then central processes might be called the affect heuristic (Finucane et al., 2000). This emotion-related heuristic implies that when one is feeling good, risk perception will be perceived as far lower and benefits as higher, so a good mood probably infers the use of positive rather then negative information. Alternatively a bad mood should enforce the processing of negative information, which might be one of the specific functions of fear in persuasion (Lerner and Keltner, 2001). The exact effects of emotion 110 Handbook of hygiene control in the food industry
induction as heuristic are, however, not well understood as of today. Fear can be a cue to take account of negative information but could also lead to despair (no use of information at all) or realisation that fear might be a bad councillor (Meijnders et al., 2001). As mentioned above, fear may also be used to stimulate the awareness of personal relevance, so triggering a central rather than a peripheral processing of the subsequent arguments. This may complicate matters even further when the aims of fear and the message are considered as one. The fear should be aimed at avoiding the risks, not at avoiding the risk communi-cation. So although emotions seem a powerful cue for peripheral processing of information as well as a potential trigger for central processing, owing to the limited knowledge of their exact working, it is hard to predict their exact effect.
Understanding the effects of emotions on attitudes and behaviour is currently one of the major research areas in social psychology.
It is not always clear whether information will be processed following the central of the peripheral route, or alternatively whether it will be processed systematically or heuristically, or even a mix thereof. Therefore, risk com-munication effort should ensure that the message conveyed in the logical arguments (for systematic processing) and in the cues (trust, expertise, layout and wording, etc.) is in concert. If this is not the case, perfectly valid arguments might be disregarded or perhaps even worse, carefully built images of trust-worthiness and expertise might be lastingly damaged (Chaiken and Maheswaran, 1994).
6.4.3 Tailored information campaigns
Following the dual process approach, as the personal relevance increases, the likelihood that information will be systematically processed will increase. One approach to effective risk communication may focus on segmenting the popula-tion according to their informapopula-tion needs, and developing specific informapopula-tion with high levels of personal relevance to specific groups of respondents.
Information is more likely to result in attitude change (and subsequent behaviour change) if perceived personal relevance is high (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). An example is provided by another area of public health, that of HIV transmission, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Information developed by the medical authorities focused on cause of the illness in terms of viral transmission, whereas the risk information would have been both more salient to the population, and more effective in preventing disease, if it had focused on people's behaviours (Fischhoff et al., 1993).
The problem with such an approach is that it is resource intensive, as research first needs to be conducted in order to identify individual differences with respect to people's perceptions and behaviours, and then tailored information needs to be delivered using delivery mechanisms preferred by different respondents.
Consumer perceptions of risks from food 111