Abstract
Although communication, broadly, is often identified as a key factor across campus sustainability initiatives, few studies have examined specific information behaviors that can affect reception of such efforts. We therefore seek to characterize motives for a key communication barrier to campus sustainability efforts: environmental information avoidance (IA), and to investigate whether these motives differ in relation to known or unknown information. This exploratory study thematically analyzed answers from an open-ended question on a questionnaire with faculty, staff and students on a U.S. university campus. We identified six environmental IA motives, ranging from information overload to efficacy constraints. Correlational analysis found significant associations between motives and known versus unknown information. The results extend research into campus sustainability communication efforts by characterizing a key barrier to such initiatives: environmental IA motives. Some of these motives appear in previous IA studies, strengthening confidence in their use across contexts, while others are newly identified, suggesting their specificity to campuses. Our novel results also suggest that IA motives depend on one’s familiarity with information. Our findings show that improving communication strategies to encourage campus sustainability efforts requires not only encouraging information seeking but also preventing IA. This research allows practitioners to better understand IA motives and customize communication strategies.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
56
Issue
1
First Page
9
Last Page
39
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Deline, Mary Beth; Rickard, Laura N.; Worwood, Jared V.; Geng, Pei; and Reed, Elisabeth
(2024)
"Environmental Information Avoidance Motives on a U.S. Campus,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 56:
No.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol56/iss1/4
Copyright
©2024 Iowa Communication Association
