The perception and communication of pesticides and biocides

Communicating risk information of environmental issues can increase people’s knowledge-level, adjusttheir risk perception and behavior accordingly, all of which may prevent or mitigate harm to themselvesor the environment. However, communicating such information is a complicated undertaking withconsiderable challenges. These challenges include variation in how communication is being perceivedand responded to between populations and within a given population and the abstract nature ofenvironmental issues, leading to communication of environmental issues often elicits only little if anyresponse. Pesticides and biocides have received little scholarly attention within communication researchcompared to other environmental issues. Although these substances remove unwanted organisms, theirresidues pose a threat towards human health and the environment, including loss of biodiversity thatconstitutes a serious threat to humanity. This dissertation addresses the research gap by asking howcommunication of risk information of pesticides and biocides can reach the intended audience to updatetheir knowledge, perception of risk and behavioral intentions?

To examine the question, the dissertation first provides an inductive and in-depth understanding of Danes opportunity, motivation and ability to acquire risk information of pesticides and biocides through five online focus groups. Building on findings from the focus groups, the second study examines
whether men with children have higher risk perception than men without children. Earlier studies suggests that people with higher risk perception are more motivated for behavioral change. In other words, men with children constitutes an example of a subgroup that may be more susceptible to risk communication. As men are more likely to use pesticides and biocides, reaching this subgroup might have a significant societal impact on consequences of pesticide residues. Studies no. 3 and no. 4 tests
two novel approaches to overcome the abstract nature of environmental issues in survey experiments. The first approach examines how evolution has shaped how people process risk communication and test such evolutionary risk communication on pesticides and biocides. The second approach examines whether proximizing consequences of pesticides and biocides increases people’s risk perception and behavioral intentions.

This dissertation finds that to reach the intended audience, communicators should consider integrating motivational stages into their communication strategy, so the aim is not necessarily to try to change the behavior of as many as possible, as a large portion of citizens might lack the ability and motivation to engage in such change. Rather, communicators may benefit from increasing the motivation and ability of the population. Furthermore, this dissertation finds that men with children have higher risk perception than men without children, indicating this group is motivated to change behavior if they are exposed to risk information of pesticides and biocides.

To overcome the challenge of abstract environmental issues, Study no. 3 finds that the processing mechanisms that evolved to facilitate communication of threats are not well suited to convey
information of environmental issues due to their abstract and complex nature, illustrated by the lack of significant results in the survey experiment. Therefore, communicators of environmental issues might benefit from tapping into these mechanisms, including framing environmental issues as concrete or increase visualization. One way to increase concreteness is to decrease the psychological distance to consequences of pesticides. However, Study no. 4 finds that proximizing consequences of pesticides did
not yield all the predicted significant results. On the other hand, Construal Level Theory predicts that proximizing consequences of environmental issues should increase the effect of contextual information, including feasibility of a behavior. Proximizing may therefore increase or decrease motivation for behavior for subgroups within the population, thereby creating a window of opportunity for communicators to reach such subgroups. If communicators are able to tap into this window of opportunity, communication may be able to increase people’s knowledge-level, adjust their risk perception, and change their behavior to environmental issues accordingly.