The risk perception studies based on the psychometric paradigm have provided the useful information for understanding people’s risk judgement related with nuclear energy. To be specific, the studies which focused on the impact of perceived risk, perceived benefit, stigma, trust, and knowledge were very helpful to understand the risk perception of public. However, they overlooked that a lot of risk judgements are done thorough Internet these days.
Based on online survey data (N=1,000), the main purpose of this study is to figure out who have intention of spreading information against nuclear power energy. For this purpose, we will use nuclear oppostion as a dependent variable. In this regard, the nuclear opposition is divided into two concept; online and offline. The online opposition is the intention of participating in signature collecting or writing on the Internet against nuclear power. The offline opposition is the intention of sharing negative information with their acquaintances.
On top of that, we use psychometric paradigm and personal experience as the independent variables. The psychometric paradigm means that perceived benefit, perceived risk, stigma, trust, and knowledge which is used in most of existing research. The personal experience is composed of offline and online experience. The offline experience is experience of meeting authorities or visiting to a nuclear power plant and the online experience refers to things like getting information or interaction on the Internet.
This study helps us to understand the cognitive structure and the reactions of netizens. Also our study will well highlight how the personal experience plays a role in risk judging process and, by extension, we could compare with the difference of the effect of offline and online experience. The result of this study will contribute to designing the practical risk communication strategies of government.