Data showed that preferences for delaying decisions

selleck chemical were associated positively with information seeking, and that this relationship was moderated by both anxiety and information utility. Participants sought more information when they experienced lower levels of anxiety. Furthermore, participants sought more information when they perceived what they had read during the study to be useful. Together, these findings suggest that, for people who find it difficult to regulate the decision process, information seeking is a strategy to delay decisions that becomes more likely when information is perceived to be useful, and less likely under conditions of anxiety. Selleckchem UK-371804 The research has several practical implications for policy makers and food safety risk managers. Research into risk communication has moved towards bottom-up development

of information that takes lay concerns into account (Bickerstaff et al., 2010 and Stern and Fineberg, 1996). This practical strategy could have the benefit of influencing the balance of affect and information perceptions that have a critical influence on information seeking behaviour such that people are motivated enough to read information, e.g. on websites, and educated about how to act on it to change domestic practices and reduce the risk of infection from Salmonella. Such an approach could also avoid raising anxiety levels to the point where people avoid food safety information.

Future research could examine further the relationships between information processing styles and information seeking, and the moderating DCLK1 roles of anxiety and information utility. In particular, further examination of the processing that underlies delayed decision making would enable more complete modelling of the relationship, and it is possible that there are other situational moderators that interact with information processing styles. Future research could consider the relationship between information seeking and effective decision making to test for the positive and negative impact of different information processing styles, and do so in different decision contexts. There could also be further examination of the effects of age and gender on decision processes and information seeking. Epstein et al. (1996), for example, found some differences between men and women’s preferences for analytical and heuristic thinking, although the findings were not consistent across studies. It is also possible that decision processes develop with age (Mata, Schooler, & Rieskamp, 2007), thus future research could consider how these demographic factors function in relation to information seeking.