The Effects of Substantive Information and Symbols on Citizens' Attitudes, and Their Moderation by Personal Relevance

Effective public communications have been proposed as a remedy for citizens' distrust in government organizations, and dissatisfaction with them. The studies that explored the effectiveness of government public communications... [ view full abstract ]

Effective public communications have been proposed as a remedy for citizens' distrust in government organizations, and dissatisfaction with them. The studies that explored the effectiveness of government public communications have focused mainly on the extent to which they provide substantive information about bureaucracies' policies and actions. However, these studies have largely overlooked the responses of citizens to symbolic elements, entangled in these communications. Understanding the underlying psychological mechanisms of these different dimensions of communications, and the relations between them, is essential for understanding how public communications shape citizens' attitudes. Building on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), developed in social psychology, I theorize that citizens' responses to substantive information represent elaborate scrutiny of arguments, whereas responses to symbolic elements represent quick processing of peripheral cues. Accordingly, citizens will be more susceptible to substantive information (as opposed to symbols) when they perceive the policy issue in the communication as having personal relevance for themselves, which enhances their motivation to invest in elaborate processing. To test this expectation, I design two survey experiments in a realistic setting. The experiments will examine the responses of Israeli citizens to the Environmental Protection Ministry's publication of its strategic plan in relation to the air pollution in the Haifa Bay area. The communication (i.e. the strategic plan) will be displayed to subjects under varying conditions of substantive information (policy measures that are relevant vs. irrelevant for achieving the policy aim) and symbols (with vs. without the ministry’s logo). Personal relevance will be operationalized by comparing the responses of citizens from the polluted Haifa Bay area with citizens from other cities (Experiment 1), and by manipulating the communication itself (Experiment 2).