An Empirical Study on Hazardous Chemicals Risk of Urban Residents in China: Analysis of Mediating Effect and Channel Preference of Response Action Decision Model.

Ziwei Wang,Tiezhong Liu,Yongkui Liu

doi:10.3390/ijerph182010932

Abstract

Because urban residents do not have a strong understanding of hazardous chemicals, they cannot effectively make response action decisions to ensure safety, protect lives, and reduce property damage. This paper constructs the Response Action Decision Model of hazardous chemicals, and analyzes the mediating effect of Information Processing and Threat Perception, as well as channel preferences of urban residents with different demographic characteristics. A total of 1700 questionnaires were collected in Chongqing, Tianjin, Fujian Zhangzhou, Shandong Zibo and Lanzhou, where there are significant hazardous chemicals factories. The results show that: Firstly, Information Processing and Threat Perception have significant mediating effects on the relationship between Mass Media, Social Media, Face-to-face communication and Response Action Decision in a single channel, which can effectively promote the spread effect of different channels, affecting the ways that urban residents make hazard response action decisions; secondly, Information Processing and Threat Perception do not have a mediating effect on the relationship between the channel combination of “Mass Media ↔ Social Media”, “Mass Media ↔ Face-to-face communication”, “Social Media ↔ Face-to-face communication” and Response Action Decision, and the channel combination can directly link to the Response Action Decision; thirdly, in terms of the extent that it affects urban residents to make response action decisions, Mass Media is greater than Social Media and greater than Face-to-face communication; fourthly, two demographic characteristics of gender and experience have a stronger moderating effect for the Mass Media channel, while other demographic characteristics have greater influences on the Response Action Decision Model; finally, the Response Action Decision Model can be better applied to those analyses and research which address threat perception of hazardous chemicals and response action decisions of urban residents in China.

Highlights

↔ Face-to-face communication” and Response Action Decision, and the channel combination can directly link to the Response Action Decision; thirdly, in terms of the extent that it affects urban residents to make response action decisions, Mass Media is greater than Social Media and greater than Face-to-face communication; fourthly, two demographic characteristics of gender and experience have a stronger moderating effect for the Mass Media channel, while other demographic characteristics have greater influences on the Response Action Decision Model; the Response
The six models consider the relationship between Information Processing and Response Action Decision, Channel preference and Threat perception, so as to observe the mediating effect of Information Processing and Threat perception on how the urban residents are biased towards different communication channels from which to obtain hazard information and enhance threat perception of hazardous chemicals, which affects their response action decisions
Amos21.0 to carry out confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the multi-stage model, and evaluate its construct reliability and validity

Summary

Introduction

The safety management of chemical hazards is a major global concern. Since the 1950s, there have been more than 60 major environmental pollution incidents occurring around the globe, causing sickness in 400,000 to 500,000 people, and the death of 100,000 [1]. Since the 1980s, China has made remarkable achievements in many fields, such as the economy, culture, science and technology, industry, etc. With further development of the chemicals industry, the use of hazardous chemicals has become more frequent [2]. A series of major accidents have occurred in recent years, such as the PX project explosion in Gu Lei

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Conclusion