Health and environmental risk communication: avoiding risk information avoidance and unintentional message framing effects

Health and environmental risk communication aims to promote informed judgments and decision making. For this, people need to achieve two initial goals: (1) to access risk information and (2) to understand such information. This chapter firstly discusses relevant barriers that can prevent people from adequately accessing information, taking into consideration contextual factors, namely, communication environment. Additionally, individual factors influencing active information avoidance (i.e., avoiding information that is available but unwanted) are discussed. Secondly, a closer look at motivational factors for information avoidance in the context of climate change communication is provided, with a particular focus on red meat consumption, considering both health and environmental risk contexts. Since climate change is often perceived as a psychologically distant topic, communicators should aim to frame climate change messages in a way that increases public engagement while avoiding distress, which may increase information avoidance. Ways to mitigate the negative effects of information avoidance are discussed, such as raising awareness about information avoidance and the potentiation of social resources in mitigating it. Lastly, barriers and facilitators of an adequate understanding of the information are presented, highlighting contextual factors for the tailoring of information to the target audience.