The Korea Local Administration Review

This article examines how citizens’ pre-existing knowledge structures forpublic relations affect their evaluations on new advertisements. In particular, itshows, focusing on the case of Han River Renaissance Projects, the impact oncitizens’ evaluation varies depending on how contents of public relations aredelivered. In so doing, it reviews the existing theories of the role of memorystructures on the processing of new information and develops an empiricalmeasure of the citizens’ schema on public administrations. Relying on aregression analysis, it empirically tests how intensively public approves theadvertisement of the Han River projects based on the so-called ‘schema ofsatisfaction’. Two interesting findings are as follows. First, the schema ofsatisfaction has a significant influence on citizens’ evaluation on the newadvertisements. Second, the more concrete contents of the public relations aredelivered, the higher probability of citizens’ agreement will be expected.
□ Keywords: public relations, schema, knowledge structure, Han River projects