Risk communication about particulate matter in the workplace: A digital experiment

Workers do not always showcase adequate knowledge on potential long-term health effects and other properties of particulate matter (PM), which may lead to a decreased tendency to work safely in a high-PM environment. To empower workers to work more safely in environments with high PM exposure, we developed an educational folder tethered to their information needs. In the present study, we test two versions of our folder in a digital panel experiment with 227 participants who regularly worked in environments where they are potentially highly exposed to PM. We tested one version with and one without visualizations of the exposure and health effects, as it is currently unclear whether such visualizations can improve risk understanding. We compared them with an existing folder about PM and with a control condition involving a text unrelated to the subject. The outcome variables included people’s opinions about the quality of the material; learning effects by means of knowledge questions; and perception- and behavior-related effects about PM and mitigation methods. The results revealed a significant and relevant difference on improvement of knowledge scores between our folder with extra visualizations and the control condition. No significant difference between the conditions with regards to perception and behavior effects were found.