Table 1.
Perceived 20-year risk (5-point scale) of nanotechnology for respondents characterized by: | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Low-media exposure | High-media exposure | “Risk gap” | |||
In the area of | T1 | T2 | T1 | T2 | T2 |
Human health | 3.04 | 3.25 | 3.18 | 3.75a | +0.50 |
Animal health | 3.08 | 2.96 | 2.96 | 3.21 | +0.25 |
Environmental pollution | 2.56 | 2.88 | 2.89 | 3.14 | +0.26 |
Expenses | 2.92 | 3.20 | 2.96 | 3.57b | +0.37 |
Rich/poor country divide | 2.80 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.89 | +0.89 |
Privacy issues | 2.88 | 3.68c | 3.39 | 3.93d | +0.25 |
Access issues | 2.76 | 2.92 | 3.39 | 3.32 | +0.40 |
Economic insecurity | 2.36 | 2.72 | 2.93 | 2.82 | +0.10 |
The “risk gap” represents the degree to which high media exposure respondents continue to perceive more risk than low-media exposure respondents at T2. Significance levels of p = 0.100 or below based on 2-tailed t-tests between T1 and T2 values for perceived risk by type of risk separately for each exposure group are indicated in footnotes a–d. Includes only respondents who remained active in study at T2 (N = 57)
ap = 0.080
bp = 0.027
cp = 0.041
dp = 0.037