The risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model, proposed by Robert Griffin and colleagues, seeks to explain how and when people are likely to seek information about various risks. The model is based on the idea that people's engagement with risk information is determined by many factors, including characteristics of the hazard, beliefs about the channel where the information is available, their own skills in gathering the information, their past experience, and the extent to which they feel knowledgeable about the risk. RISP was originally developed to examine environmental risk information seeking, but has since been expanded to other topics, including clinical trial enrollment, influenza vaccine uptake, and engagement in health-protective behaviors by low-income populations.

Figure 1 depicts the main elements of the RISP model. The ...