Abstract
The aims of this study were to focus on the Y2K issue and to examine the effect of social consideration (the degree to which people perceive themselves as a social entity rather than an individual entity, Yoshida et al. , 1999) on perceptions and human behavior regarding this issue. Undergraduates and junior college students (N=254) responded to a set of questionnaires before and after Y2K (2000/1/1). The results were as follows : (1) Although people perceived Y2K-related risks, they didn't take adequate preventive measures against the impending Y2K changes ; (2) An optimistic outlook toward Y2K was negatively correlated with the two risk communication factors of information gathering and need for information from experts ; (3) People with high Social Consideration had high levels of both information gathering and need for information, and they also took more precautionary measures than did people with low Social Consideration. These results suggest that enhancing social consideration is important in order to make risk communication more successful.
