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The messenger matters: environmental nonprofit organisations’ public faces, information recipients’ worldviews, and the credibility of ENPOs’ disclosed policy information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2021

Li-Yin Liu Open the ORCID record for Li-Yin Liu [Opens in a new window]  and
Rikki Morris
Li-Yin Liu*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Dayton, Dayton, USA
Rikki Morris
Affiliation:
Master of Public Administration, University of Dayton, Dayton, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: lliu01@udayton.edu
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Abstract

Environmental nonprofit organisations (ENPOs) have become crucial policy actors who have undertaken information campaigns to attract public attention and to gain public support for policies. However, the credibility of policy information released by ENPOs is understudied. To fill the gap, this study utilised Douglas and Wildavsky’s cultural theory (CT), to seek answers to two questions: 1) how do ENPOs’ public faces affect public perception of the credibility of the policy information released by their organisations? 2) how do the public’s worldviews affect trust in information released by ENPOs with different types of public faces? The evidence from an online survey confirms what CT predicted: Hierarchs tend to believe information released by policy actors with proper authority; individualists tend to believe information released by policy actors who favour economic growth over environmental protection; egalitarians favour all pro-environmental policy information even if the information is released by noncredible policy actors.

Keywords

policy informationenvironmental nonprofit organisationcredibilitycultural theoryscientific controversy
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 165 - 184
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

†

First author and Corresponding author

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