MOTIVES BEHIND EFFECTIVE RISK COMMUNICATION: THE PALESTINIAN CIVIL DEFENSE AWARENESS MESSAGES AS A MODEL رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This study examined the concept of public awareness and its impact on building attitudes and creating a positive incentive for a behavioral intention towards the most common risks in Palestinian society. It is the first to investigate the understanding of the Palestinian public, who receive awareness messages, in terms of the degree of attention, persuasion, and motivation towards a behavioral intention. The main goal is to create more precautious public and evaluate the impact of public awareness messages. The researcher followed quantitative, qualitative, and quasi-experiment approaches by distributing a questionnaire to a random, stratified, and representative sample of 1514 Palestinians from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip in the period from 17-6-2021 to 28-6-2021. Furthermore, a controlled social experiment or Quasi-experiment displayed two awareness messages; each represents a separate route according to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). The theory builds a persuasive model when people are exposed to a form of communication, processing it at high or low levels based on several factors (motivation, ability, degree of involvement, and need for cognition (NFC)). In line with the experiment, the researcher exposed 799 randomly chosen Palestinians to an awareness message (in a text form) about how electrical contact occurs, and another 714 Palestinians from the sample to an awareness message in the form of a picture bearing the civil defense logo and containing visual effects of the risk of electrical contact. Additionally, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with Public Relations (PR) officers and media practitioners in Palestinian Civil Defense (PCD) to determine how they formulate civil defense messages and what channels they employ to deliver those messages. The researcher reached a set of results based on theoretical approaches and statistical tests appropriate for this type of study, stating that: 65% of Palestinians prefer risk messages to be in the form of a picture with visual effects rather than messages in the form of text. The researcher also found that only 4.5% of Palestinians have a high need for cognition, or “critical thinker,” who prefer research and scrutiny of messages. While for the demographic variables (except for the sex variable), results revealed no significant difference at the levels of attention, persuasion, and behavioral intention among respondents. Moreover, to understand the obstacles to persuasion in the VI VI Palestinian society, the researcher employed the theory of Optimistic Bias (represented by the factors of ability and age), as determinates to the level of intensity people feel towards risk, leading to less level of persuasion when exposed to awareness messages of PCD. Finally, the researcher found that risk perception was higher among females and the elderly, which aligns with the findings of this study, where behavioral intention to act according to PCD messages is higher among females. In addition, the level of attention is significant and higher among the elderly for the same reasons.