Katherine A. McComas

Cornell University | CU · Department of Communication

Many believe that enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) can greatly increase the extraction of geothermal energy worldwide, helping to decarbonize heat and electricity production. Effective communication is key to realizing the potential of EGS, yet we currently know little about how the public perceives this emerging technology. This exploratory study...

This chapter provides an overview of the major themes, findings, and recommendations from NPCC4. It presents summary statements from each chapter of the assessment which identify salient and pressing issues raised and provides recommendations for future research and for enhancement of climate resiliency. The chapter also outlines a set of broader r...

Lead hunting ammunition is a key source of lead exposure for wildlife and humans who eat wild game. To improve the effectiveness of lead ammunition risk communication, and avoid unintended negative effects from poorly conceived messages, we examined how New York State hunter education instructors view the lead issue. We conducted in-depth interview...

We employed the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model to identify socio-cognitive factors motivating hunters’ information seeking, sharing, and discussion of the risks of using lead ammunition for hunting. Values, risk perceptions, and informational insufficiency similarly predicted individual- and societal-level informational behavi...

The report summarizes key findings regarding NYS instructors’ knowledge, personal values, perceived social norms, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward lead and nonlead ammunition. The document also presents feedback on an educational video the authors created in 2021, which was designed to be used by NYS instructors in their classes. We incl...

Drawing from protection motivation theory (PMT), we examined how place attachment and negative emotions, alongside threat and coping appraisals, personal experiences, and demographic characteristics, relate to behavioral intentions to mitigate exposure to flood risks in southern Louisiana. We administered a statewide, representative telephone surve...

In 2013, the American public ranked climate change at the very bottom of 21 policy issues that they believed the President and Congress should deal with. Yet by 2021, the climate issue was at the forefront of most policy agendas and was a much more salient concern in terms of public opinion. This chapter looks at the role of television, especially...

Southern Louisiana and its coastal bayous are sites of both frequent flooding and rapid coastal land loss, exacerbated by the increasing effects of climate change. Though much work has examined flood risk perceptions in coastal areas, few studies have considered the qualitative and contextual dimensions of perceptions of coastal land loss and its a...

In May 2020, the New York City (NYC) Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency (MOCR) began convening bi-weekly discussions, called the Rapid Research and Assessment (RRA) Series, between City staff and external experts in science, policy, design, engineering, communications, and planning. The goal was to rapidly develop authoritative, actionable inform...

Despite potential benefits emerging energy technologies usually promise, the public often meets them with skepticism, resistance or even outright rejection. In this study, we investigated the potential role communication plays in the early stages of opinion formation. In particular, we examined the relationships among message framing, information p...

Previous research suggests that when individuals have limited knowledge to make sense of new or emerging technologies, they may rely more on available cues, such as the fairness of those managing the risks, when developing their attitudinal and behavioral responses to the technology. To examine this further, we designed an online experiment (N = 1,...

The 40th Anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis presents an apt time to step back and review the field of risk communication. In this review, we first evaluate recent debates over the field's current state and future directions. Our takeaway is that efforts to settle on a single, generic version of what constitutes risk communication will be...

Understanding why private property owners take actions to conserve bats has become increasingly important in U.S. states where the fungus causing white-nose syndrome (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) has decimated bat populations. We surveyed property owners in three New York State counties (n = 2,500) and used multiple linear regression analyses to t...

The global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already had an enormous impact and will surely have profound consequences for many years to come. The authors reflect on three risk communication themes related to the pandemic: trust, tradeoffs, and preparedness. Trust is critically important during such a rapidly evolving event characterized...

The order in which individuals receive information about wildlife may influence their attitude toward wildlife differently. We explored order effects of a threat message that induced more fear versus a suffering message that elicited more compassion on attitude toward wildlife. Specifically, we focused on bats, a risk-laden species also suffering m...

Abstract The interplay between science, risk assessment and risk management has always been complex, and even more so in a world increasingly characterised by rapid technical innovation, new modes of communication, suspicion about authorities and experts, and demands for people to have a say in decisions that are made on their behalf. In this chall...

Wildlife managers and researchers have suspected that urine-based lure products collected from captive cervids could be potential media contributing to the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer (Odocoileus spp.). Although personnel in multiple wildlife agencies have taken the precautionary approach to prohibit the sales or use of urine-ba...

Efforts to communicate risk reduction policies must consider how target audiences will respond to the source of the message. This study investigates how modifying the message source enhances or diminishes psychological reactance against a policy designed to curb a wildlife disease. In an experimental study, we attributed a press release announcing...

Pathways to recognizing shared interests in addressing environmental problems are sometimes blocked by a lack of understanding or even misperceptions among stakeholder groups, which can impede productive communication. Drawing on a currently evolving case study, this study examines the perceptions of stakeholders involved with oyster restoration in...

Scientists are now more certain than ever that humans are responsible for climate change through the combustion of fossil fuels. A recent Global Energy Assessment report, compiled by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, indicates that, globally, domestic energy consumption accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas e...

Risk scholars have long examined how public opinion about environmental issues is shaped by message framing devices, for example, as when climate change is portrayed as a ‘public health’ vs. ‘environmental health’ issue, or when the phenomenon itself is labeled as ‘global warming’ vs. ‘climate change.’ Yet, seldom do these framing devices occur in...

This study investigates the level of awareness about funding influences and potential conflicts of interests (COI) among early career researchers. The sample for this study included users of one or more of the 14 U.S. laboratories associated with the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network. To be eligible, respondents must have been either s...

ContextImproving awareness to prevent exposure to rabies from bats is a public health priority. However, messages about bats and rabies often sensationalise this issue and represent bats in a negative way, which can negatively affect support for bat conservation.AimsThe conflicts between public health goals and conservation needs seem unavoidable b...

Growing awareness of the potential for some energy-related activities to induce earthquakes has created a need to understand how the public evaluates the risks of induced earthquakes versus the benefits of energy development. To address this need, this study presents a web survey that used a between-subjects factorial experimental design to explore...

This study addressed how engaging in different forms of information exchange within a group is related to group members' willingness to share risk information with outsiders. Drawing from social exchange theories, we focused on 3 unrestricted forms of information exchange: pure-generalized, group-generalized, and productive. We hypothesized that in...

Building on research in motivated reasoning and framing in science communication, we examine how messages that vary attribution of responsibility (human vs animal) and temporal orientation (now vs in the next 10 years) for wildlife disease risk influence individuals’ conservation intentions. We conducted a randomized experiment with a nationally re...

The dual pressures of climate change and population growth in Africa make enhancing sustainable development an important focus of initiatives hoping to reach as many people as possible with appropriate innovations. Resource and infrastructure challenges often limit the ability of programs to expand through the use of extension and other forms of in...

Since 1960, bat rabies variants have become the greatest source of human rabies deaths in the United States. Improving rabies awareness and preventing human exposure to rabid bats remains a national public health priority today. Concurrently, conservation of bats and the ecosystem benefits they provide is of increasing importance due to declining p...

(SAV)

As anthropogenic stressors threaten the health of marine ecosystems, there is a need to better understand how the public processes and responds to information about ocean health. Recent studies of public perceptions about ocean issues report high concern but limited knowledge, prompting calls for information campaigns to mobilize public support for...

This article extends our understanding of risk communication related to communal risk and risk information sharing. Building on research from risk communication, organizational behavior, and social psychology, it examines individual-, relation-, and community-level motivations to share information about a devastating plant disease. This disease can...

Issues of transparency lay at the center of the debate surrounding the labeling of genetically modified (GM) food products in the USA. These issues include not only the argument that consumers should be allowed to make purchasing choices based on full disclosure of product ingredients but also that they should have access to the process that makes...

Starting in the post-Civil War era, the United States moved steadily toward an industrialized mass production, mass consumption society. As corporations grew in size and enjoyed virtually unlimited risk self-governance, critics of such processes and practices battled to define what risk levels are safe and how fair any level of safety is. That batt...

This study investigates how the physical proximity of university-sponsored climate mitigation projects may moderate the relationship between affect and project support and impact public support for the respective projects. Using a mail survey (N = 667) of residents near a major university in New York State, we find that positive and negative affect...

We draw from theories of motivated reasoning, dual-processing models, and attribution of responsibility to examine how scientific messages may increase public polarization with respect to emerging risk issues such as Lyme disease. A nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 460) read messages about Lyme disease that varied the framing of r...

This article reviews a research program that began in the 1990s (see Shanahan 1996; Shanahan & McComas, 1997; McComas, Shanahan & Butler 2001) that has been revisited only sporadically. The research was conceptualized in the late 80s and reached a first period of fruition in the mid 1990s, as an extension of the Cultural Indicators project, which i...

Much discussion surrounds the question of whether people tend to perceive new and emerging technologies in ways similar to how they perceive older, more familiar technologies. The study argues that the direct association between familiarity and support is just one way of thinking about how familiarity may affect views about emerging technologies, s...

In this comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of risk communication, the field’s leading experts summarize theory, current research, and practice in a range of disciplines and describe effective communication approaches for risk situations in diverse contexts, such as health, environment, science, technology, and crisis. Offering practical insig...

In his essay, ‘Four Questions for Risk Communication,’ Roger Kasperson challenges the risk communication community to take better stock of the lessons it’s learned over the past several decades. Implicated are the failure of many to reap the rewards or benefits of our field’s discoveries and the attendant responsibility we collectively bear in not...

Although research suggests that feedback on energy usage can generate savings in residential and organizational settings, investigations into the effectiveness of comparative feedback efforts have been fragmented and the findings inconclusive. To help fill this gap, we present research on the effectiveness of a comparative feedback campaign in prom...

Little previous research has examined attitudes about societal and ethical issues (SEI) among interns participating in research experience for undergraduate programs (REUs) in nanotechnology, thus neglecting an important population for understanding the burgeoning views of the next generation of nanotechnology researchers. This study surveyed a sam...

This study examines support for the genetic modification (GM) of crops in the context of preventing "late blight," a devastating potato and tomato disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1850s and results in substantial crop loss today. We surveyed U.S. adults who do the primary grocery shopping in their household (n = 859). Half of the...

Although research suggests that feedback on energy usage can generate savings in residential and organizational settings, investigations into the effectiveness of comparative feedback efforts have been fragmented and the findings inconclusive. To help fill this gap, we present research on the effectiveness of a comparative feedback campaign in prom...

In 2007, a US National Park Service (NPS) biologist working in Grand Canyon National Park in the state of Arizona died from pneumonic plague contracted from a mountain lion, prompting NPS, in partnership with local and federal agencies, to inform publics about plague risk within park contexts. Overall, the incident attracted limited media attention...

In an era of rapid environmental change and uncertain futures, context-specific informa-tion about how stakeholders relate to resources and resource management will become increas-ingly important in designing effective and durable natural resource management strategies. In this session, invited panelists provided examples of contributions from vari...

In 2009, Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) initiated a study into the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of its faculty, staff, and graduate students about energy conservation at work. Formative survey research following the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) examined the influences of beliefs, perceive...

Utility theory assumes that people seek personally optimal solutions, are self-interested, forward looking, and rely on consistent and rational decision-making processes. If that were the case, and if adequate information were available at no or little cost, then more than 46% of the U.S. adult population would have a last will and testament, inclu...

The current study seeks to demonstrate that a citizen views about public meeting structure and related groups matter in predicting satisfaction with public engagement and willingness to attend future meetings. Public health agencies frequently use public meetings to communicate risk information, but relatively little social science research has exa...

This study extends a risk information seeking and processing model to explore the relative effect of cognitive processing strategies, positive and negative emotions, and normative beliefs on individuals' decision making about potential health risks. Most previous research based on this theoretical framework has examined environmental risks. Applyin...

Wildlife professionals working at the interface where confl icts arise between people and wild animals have an exceptional responsibility in the long-term interest of sustaining society's support for wildlife and its conservation by resolving human–wildlife confl icts so that people continue to view wildlife as a valued resource. The challenge of u...

To understand what motivates people to attend to information about clinical trial enrollment, this study applies the risk information seeking and processing model (RISP) to explore potential differences in multichannel information seeking between (a) the general population and (b) cancer patients and their caregivers. The unique context of clinical...

In response to low influenza vaccination rates among health care workers, health officials have explored determinants of uptake and developed communication interventions. Key to these efforts is how workers seek and attend to vaccine information. We applied a model of risk information seeking and processing to survey 226 physicians and nurses at a...

Research suggests that fairness perceptions matter to people who are asked to evaluate the acceptability of risks or risk management. Two separate national random surveys (n = 305 and n = 529) addressed Americans' concerns about and acceptance of nanotechnology risk management in the context of the degree to which they view scientists and risk mana...

Across the United States, universities are grappling with challenges associated with adopting approaches to more sustainable energy use. One approach has been to develop energy-related projects in their local, host communities. Because host communities can play a major role in the successful planning and implementation of these projects, understand...

While cognitive heuristics may produce successful, efficient outcomes, they can also introduce predictable biases that may be unavoidable even for seasoned experts. This study connects the concept of “professional intuition” to the practice of strategic communication, suggesting that people may rely on heuristics to profile an audience. These judgm...

Dependence in nanotechnology on external funding and academic-industry relationships has led to questions concerning its influence on research directions, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest to arise and impact scientific integrity and public trust. This study uses a survey of 193 nanotechnology industry and academic researchers to e...

This study examines theoretical linkages between the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model (RISP) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in a context of health decision making related to potential risks involved in clinical trials. A decade after the RISP model was proposed, abundant empirical evidence attesting to the model’s robustness...

Scholars have long lobbied for a view of risk communication that supplants a conventional ‘transmission’ model of risk communication with an alternative that considers the complex social environment that accompanies any risk communication effort. Along these lines, this study examines the relative influence of official health messages versus symbol...

Low patient accrual in clinical trials poses serious concerns for the advancement of medical science in the United States. Past research has identified health communication as a crucial step in overcoming barriers to enrollment. However, few communication scholars have studied this problem from a sociopsychological perspective to understand what mo...

Many developing countries have allocated significant amounts of funding for nanoscience and nanotechnology research, yet compared to developed countries, there has been little study, discussion, or debate over social and ethical issues. Using in-depth interviews, this study focuses on the perceptions of practitioners, that is, scientists and engine...

This study investigates whether perceived fairness of doctor-patient interactions relates to individuals' willingness to communicate with their doctors about clinical trial enrollment. It also explores how willingness to talk, the perceived fairness of interactions, and trust in doctors relate to intentions to participate in a future clinical trial...

Public meetings are often referred to as “rituals” to denote a largely symbolic activity with little concrete meaning. This essay explores how public meeting rituals may produce very real impacts on participants and pragmatic outcomes. Whereas tangible outputs of rituals are not always evident, ritual theory suggests that participants can derive la...

We present a cross-cultural comparison of newspaper coverage of global warming in France and in the United States (1987-1997) as a case study to analyze the impact of culturally bound journalistic practices on media attention cycles. Based on the results of a content analysis, we show that France's coverage was more event-based, focused more on int...

To investigate cancer patients' motivations for clinical trial enrollment, this study tests the proposition that a model of Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) could serve as an antecedent to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). With data from a telephone survey, we examined whether components of the RISP model had significant impact on...

A knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) questionnaire combined with entomological surveys of residential mosquito-breeding sites were conducted in two Upstate New York neighborhoods. We tested the hypothesis that "correct" West Nile virus (WNV) knowledge and perceptions correspond with the use of practices that prevent mosquitoes from breeding...

A growing body of research recommends interaction between managers and stakeholders to improve natural resource management decisions. While formative stakeholder research and summative evaluations of communication efforts have been well-studied, less research has included formative evaluations comparing managers and stakeholders to inform communica...

One of the key challenges facing efforts to translate nutrition research into public health recommendations is understanding how the public will respond to these efforts, including whether they will trust the information. Among factors that influence trust in health communication is the extent to which the sources of the information are considered...

Attracting new technologies to a region can mean significant economic growth, so understanding why some communities may not favor becoming "the next Silicon Valley" merits consideration. This study investigates the relationship among the perceived behavior of local scientists and community members' attitudes toward their research. Drawing on theori...

This study explores local newspaper coverage of official cancer cluster investigations in seven different communities. The authors developed the underlying coding schema based on social-psychological research about how individuals assess the fairness of decision makers. The analysis therefore focuses on the degree to which news coverage describes s...

This article focuses on the relative influence of individual versus community effects on risk perception. The study is grounded in literature examining how individuals manage information and make risk judgments in the context of suspected environmental cancer threats. We focus on three individual-level perspectives: the psychometric model of risk p...

This paper examines how institutional trust affects the way in which people process information and perceive risk. Data come from a study of risk perception in the circumstance of US state health department investigations of suspected cancer clusters, with 30 cases examined (n = 1,111). Trust is assessed for three information sources: state health...

Drawing on procedural justice research from social psychology, this study explores the role that journalistic practice plays in telling community members about whether local politicians are behaving fairly. Qualitative interviews with 24 community journalists working in cities in Upstate New York are used to answer the following research questions:...

Holding a public meeting is a frequent method of communicating with community residents during official investigations into possible cancer clusters; however, there has been little formal research into the effectiveness of this method of health communication. This article presents research examining the influence of public meetings held during ongo...

Public participation in natural resource management has been described as paradoxical: citizens want the best science to guide natural resource management decisions, but not to the exclusion of their input; agencies want meaningful citizen involvement in their management decisions, but they also want citizens to trust their scientific expertise. As...

Research on procedural justice shows that when people view procedures as fair, they are more satisfied with the process and accepting of the outcomes. The group value model, in particular, argues that people care about procedural justice because it communicates whether those in charge are neutral, trustworthy, and respectful of people's rights. Thi...

Cancer is a significant public health topic and is frequently a factor in public reactions to environmental hazards. It may be reasonable to suggest that a unique form of health anxiety exists - one specific to cancer. In this article, we explore a measure of cancer anxiety that has applicability to risk perception in the specific context of commun...

This study uses a mail survey (N = 1,305) conducted in two Upstate New York counties to explore relationships between media use and individual fairness judgments regarding local scientists. It extends previous work in organizational justice to a community setting, with local scientists evaluated according to four social-psychological dimensions of...

Why do citizens choose to attend or not to attend community public meetings about possible cancer clusters? To answer this question, we examine self-report data collected during a series of mail surveys conducted in six communities experiencing current health investigations into suspect levels of cancer or cancer clusters. We analyze the data using...

Ten years ago, scholars suggested that risk communication was embarking on a new phase that would give increased attention to the social contexts that surround and encroach on public responses to risk information. A decade later, many researchers have answered the call, with several defining studies examining the social and psychological influences...

Efforts aimed at increasing civic-mindedness must consider both what encourages and what discourages political engagement. Procedural justice argues that individuals care about the fairness of decision-making or deliberative procedures beyond whether the outcome of any future decision goes in their preferred direction. In turn, perceptions of proce...

Public meetings are among the most commonly used, frequently criticized, yet least understood methods of public participation in community planning. Although systematic research on public meetings is sparse, a vast, if fragmented, amount of experiential knowledge exists, and that can form the basis for a working theory of why some public meetings w...