RAPID Proposal: The Impact of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

这项工作评估了福岛核电站灾难对美国人对决策者公平性的看法以及他们接受核电决策的意愿的影响。该项目的重点是这些观点在多大程度上与媒体对福岛事件的报道有关。这项研究包括对曾在2010年3月和2010年夏末参加过关于核能的民意调查的受访者的调查。第二次民意调查是在墨西哥湾深水地平线钻井平台爆炸导致大规模石油泄漏之后进行的。将在原来的小组中增加额外的受访者样本，以获得800名参与者的最终样本量，以便进行未来的研究。部分面板设计的使用提供了一种独特的能力，可以理解由于福岛灾难而发生的对核电的态度变化的原因。参与调查的人来自一个学术水准的、基于概率的在线小组。除了了解更多关于核电观念的特定问题价值外，该研究还解决了与媒体效应领域的风险传播研究人员相关的几个问题，以及公平观念对技术观点的作用。在此过程中，拟议的研究将把过去媒体效应研究的理论整合到风险传播的子领域。该RAPID提案符合NSF快速资助标准，即需要紧急支持，以及其他智力价值和更广泛影响的资助标准。NSF内部审查了该提案。

This work assesses the impact of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster on Americans' views about the fairness of decision makers and their willingness to accept nuclear power decision making. The project focuses on the degree to which such views are associated with attention to media coverage of the Fukushima incident. The research involves a survey of respondents who previously participated in polls about nuclear power in March 2010 and then again during the late summer of 2010. This second poll took place just after the massive oil spill that originated with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. An additional sample of respondents will be added to the original panel to obtain a final sample size of 800 participants to enable future research. The use of a partial panel design provides a unique capacity to understand the reasons for any changes in attitudes about nuclear power that occurred because of the Fukushima disaster. The participants in the surveys are being drawn from an academic-quality, probability-based online panel. In addition to the issue-specific value of knowing more about nuclear power perceptions, the research addresses several questions of relevance to risk communication researchers in the area of media effects and the role of fairness perceptions on views about technology. In doing so, the proposed research will integrate theory from past media effects research into the sub-field of risk communication.This RAPID proposal fulfills the NSF RAPID funding criterion of the need for urgent support as well as the other funding criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts. NSF reviewed this proposal internally.