This study investigates the phenomenon of confirmation bias in information selection in the context of nuclear spent fuel (NSF) storage facilities. An online survey was administered to a sample of 321 residents in South Korea. They were asked to assess their beliefs about the safety/risk of NSF storage facilities before and after their exposure to additional information. Our findings show a positive association between the initial belief and confirmation bias, suggesting that the research participants tend to select articles consistent with their beliefs about the safety/risk of the facility. Trust in government is negatively related to confirmation bias, implying that residents with a greater level of trust in government are more likely to choose information opposing their initial beliefs. Finally, this study finds the self-reinforcing and potentially polarizing nature of individuals' beliefs about the safety/risk of NSF storage facilities as residents’ initial beliefs are reinforced rather than challenged after they reviewed self-selected articles. Implications for public policy and communication strategies related to improving the acceptance of NSF storage facilities are discussed.

The current study challenges the prevailing perspective that failure stigma is uniformly detrimental to entrepreneurs. Drawing on social identity theory and stereotype reactance theory, we develop a model that portrays perceived failure stigma as a source of motivation for entrepreneurs’ restarting endeavors. We predict that perceiving failure stigma may increase restarting entrepreneurs’ desire to defy the negative stigma, which in turn leads to more opportunity recognition activities and improved new venture performance. We further consider entrepreneurs’ external attribution of failure as a boundary condition in the relationship between perceived stigma and desire to defy stigma. We tested our hypotheses by collecting three waves of survey data from 348 Korean entrepreneurs who had entrepreneurial failure experience and restarted new venture after failure. Our findings provide support for the positive effect of perceived stigma on restarting entrepreneurs’ opportunity recognition activities and new venture performance through their desire to defy stigma. We also find that entrepreneurs’ external attribution of failure accentuated the effect of perceived failure stigma on desire to defy stigma. The research and practical implications of these findings are discussed.