This study provided several interesting insights into opinion leader characteristics,
especially those engaged in an ANR endeavor. This study has shown there is an overall
orientation towards issue awareness and, accordingly, these individuals would typically act in an
opinion leader capacity with their contemporaries. The opinion leaders also tended to be less
willing to take risks, and have a slightly optimistic outlook. These overall results confirm
Luthans and Avolio’s (2003) statements regarding optimism being associated with leadership.
However, the willingness to take risks results are slightly contradictory to Frost, Fiedler, and
Anderson’s (1983) positive association between willingness to take risks and leadership.
Interestingly, individuals that were identified as having the most knowledge about a particular
policy issue tended to have similar characteristics: they were less likely to view situations
optimistically, and were less willing to take risks.