What Drives the Rise in Risk Perception? —— A Study on the Mechanisms through Which Risk Perception Influences Users’ Willingness to Fact-Check in the Context of AI Hallucinated Information

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_88How to use a DOI?

Keywords

AI hallucination; Risk perception; Psychological reactance; Fact-checking intention; Initial trust

Abstract

AI Hallucinations are harming the reliability of information and public trust. Although previous studies hafigve explored technical countermeasures, the path by which users’ risk perceptions are transformed into a desire for fact-checking is not yet known. Based on psychological reactance theory, this paper explores the mediating effect of psychological reactance on the path between risk perception and a willingness to fact-check, as well as the moderating role of initial trust. A survey was conducted on 141 adult users of AI with more than three months of use. Based on the results, risk perception positively correlates with a desire for fact-checking. Psychological reactance fully mediates this link (indirect effect = 0.24, 95% CI [0.12, 0.38]). The initial trust positively moderates the impact of risk perception on reactance (interaction beta = 0.21, p < 0.05). The research shows that a person’s feeling of risk can lead to a psychological need to check the facts, thus supporting demand-side governance of AI hallucinations and trust adjustment.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yujun Liu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - What Drives the Rise in Risk Perception? —— A Study on the Mechanisms through Which Risk Perception Influences Users’ Willingness to Fact-Check in the Context of AI Hallucinated Information
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 3rd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 810
EP  - 824
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_88
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_88
ID  - Liu2026
ER  -