Book/Report

FZJ-2020-02231

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Tschernobyl in der öffentlichen Meinung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland : Risikowahrnehmung, politische Einstellungen und Informationsbewertung

Hennen, L.FZJ* ; Peters, H. P.FZJ*

1990
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Zentralbibliothek, Verlag Jülich

Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/25014

Report No.: Juel-Spez-0551

Abstract: This report presents the results of three representative opinion polls carried out in theFederal Republic ofGermany on the subject of"Chernobyl" on behalf of the ProgrammeGroup Technology and Society at the KFA Jülich by Infratest Sozialforschung, Munich,in November 1986, May 1987 and May 1988 with in each case about 2000 respondents.The questions posed referred, amongst other aspects, to the assessment of risk on thebasis of the reactor disaster, to modifications of eating habits after Chernobyl, toattitudes and opinions on the use of nuclear energy in the Federal Republic, as well asto the evaluation of credibility of inf ormation sources.The results of the three opinion polls in the two years following the Chernobyl disasterpoint to far-reaching misgivings amongst the population with respect to theconsequences of the reactor disaster for the Federal Republic, which were not dispelledfrom the first to the third opinion pell. The population's attitude to nuclear energy,which had become much more critical due to the Chernobyl reactor disaster, graduallybecame more favourable to nuclear energy with an increasing period of time after theevents at Chernobyl; however, this trend was reversed again by the so-called "atomicwaste scandal".The familiar relationships of attitude to nuclear energy with sociodemographic variablescan be found once again in the present pell results: on average, women have a morenegative attitude to nuclear energy than men, younger respondents (with the exceptionof the youngest age group of 14 - 25-year-olds) are more negative than olderrespondents, and respondents with a higher level of formal education are more negativethan the less educated.lt is interesting to note that the attitude to nuclear energy is associated curvilinearly withthe level of information about it. Both those persons with a clearly more negative as wellas those with a clearly more positive attitude had a higher level of information aboutnuclear energy than respondents with a less extreme attitude. It thus becomes clear thatacceptance problems for nuclear energy cannot be regarded as the problem of a lack ofknowledge on the part of the public. The attitude of most respondents to nuclear energyis characterized by a deep-seated ambivalence: on the one hand it is associated with ahigh safety risk, but on the other hand great economic benefits are also recognized. Ina variance analysis, the two aspects explain a roughly equal level of variance in theattitude to nuclear energy.The information behaviour of the population after Chernobyl was characterized by asceptical attitude to reporting in the media, which was frequently considered to beinaccurate. A critical attitude was, however, also revealed towards primary informationsources such as the government, opposition, nuclear research centres, industry, actiongroups and ecological research institutes. The majority of the population are evidentlyoriented both towards statements from established institutions such as the governmentand nuclear research centres as well as to information from institutions and personscritical of nuclear energy; they therefore did not shut their eyes to contradictions in thepublished information. lt became clear that a majority of the respondents had a preference for a decentralized information policy where the public has unimpeded accessto as many information sources as possible.

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Publikationen vor 2000 (PRE-2000 ; Retrocat)

Research Program(s):

1. 899 - ohne Topic (POF3-899) (POF3-899)

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Database coverage:

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