抄録
Policy information, included in the experimental design of mini-publics, aims at enhancing knowledge about policy issues on the mini-publics’ agenda. However, the effectiveness of the presentation format of this information provided to respondents in enhancing knowledge about the relevant issues remained unexamined in previous studies. This study used Japanese energy policy as an issue and conducted a survey experiment on Japanese voters (N = 3,214) in 2014, which manipulated the difference in terms of the presentation format and volume of information contained in the policy information. The experimental conditions were as follows: full information, which presented all the prepared policy information; textual reduction information, which deleted some peripheral sentences from the full information; numerical reduction information, which deleted numerical values from the full information; and control conditions, which did not present any policy information. The condition for presenting the complete policy information significantly increased the knowledge about policy issues, notwithstanding the strength of policy-related attitudes that moderated the effects of policy information. Further, contrary to this study’s hypotheses, the results showed that respondents with weak attitudes toward energy policy were more likely to increase their policy knowledge under the full information condition, thereby narrowing their knowledge gap compared to those with strong policy attitudes. Thus, factors such as textual or numerical information excluded from policy information in each experimental condition contributed to the amount of policy issue-related knowledge. Recently, to prevent the spread of “harmful rumors”, the Consumer Affairs Agency released a pamphlet called “Food and Radiation Q&A,” providing information to consumers. This study’s findings can further contribute to such governmental measures by identifying a format of presenting pamphlets that can effectively enhance people’s knowledge about relevant issues.
