Environmentalists’ and business executives’ attitudes and information about the nuclear power controversy

To validate a baseline for an exercise dealing with the controversy over nuclear power, 38 environmentalists and 64 business executives completed a 24-item questionnaire of 12 attitudinal and 12 information items. Reliabilities were.87 and.56 respectively. Environmentalists were strongly unfavourable to further nuclear plant development but business executives were neutral to favourable revealing some degree of social concern. Environmentalists were better informed and executives more uncertain but attitude and information were independent if group effects were held constant. An additional sample of 49 college seniors in business administration responded like business executives. Their attitudes and information could be predicted (R =.60) from their tendency to keep up with current news and their personal assertiveness.