Determinants of risk perception towards toxic landfills and incinerators: how social factors can play a role (original) (raw)
Evaluating Determinants of Environmental Risk Perception for Risk Management in Contaminated Sites
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2014
Understanding the differences in the risk judgments of residents of industrial communities potentially provides insights into how to develop appropriate risk communication strategies. This study aimed to explore citizens' fundamental understanding of risk-related judgments and to identify the factors contributing to perceived risks. An exploratory model was created to investigate the public's risk judgments. In this model, the relationship between laypeople's perceived risks and the factors related to the physical nature of risks (such as perceived probability of environmental contamination, probability of receiving impacts, and severity of catastrophic consequences) were examined by means of multiple regression analysis. Psychological factors, such as the ability to control the risks, concerns, experiences, and perceived benefits of industrial development were also included in the analysis. The Maptaphut industrial area in Rayong Province, Thailand was selected as a case study. A survey of 181 residents of communities experiencing different levels of hazardous gas contamination revealed rational risk judgments by inhabitants of high-risk and moderate-risk communities, based on their perceived probability of contamination, probability of receiving impacts, and perceived catastrophic consequences. However, risks assessed by people in low-risk communities could not be rationally explained and were influenced by their collective experiences.
Journal of Risk Research, 2013
Over the last five decades, social science researchers have examined how the public perceives the risks associated with a variety of environmental health and safety (EHS) hazards. The body of literature that has been emerged diverse both in the methodology employed to collect and analyze data and in the subject of study. The findings have confirmed that risk perceptions vary between groups of individuals as well as between categories of EHS risks. However, the extant literature on EHS risk perceptions has failed to provide empirical insights into how risk perceptions can be best explained according to the interplay of both (1) the category of EHS hazard appraised and (2) the prominent individual-level characteristics that best explain observed risk perception differences. This study addresses this deficiency in the literature by providing insights into the individual and cumulative roles that various individual-level variables play in characterizing risk perceptions to various categories of EHS risks including 'agentic risks' like street drug use and cigarette smoking, 'emerging technological risks' like nanoparticles and cloning, and 'manufacturing risks' like air and chemical pollution. Our data are drawn from the 2009 Citizens, Science, and Emerging Technologies national study of United States households that investigated public perceptions of EHS risks, traditional and emerging media use, and various individual characteristics like personal demographics, socioeconomic factors, and perceptual filters. The findings show that some categories of EHS risks like those associated with emerging technologies may be more easily predicted than other categories of risks and that individual-level characteristics vary in their explanative power between risk categories even among a single sample of respondents.
Risk Analysis, 2008
This case study examines the hazard and risk perception and the need for decontamination according to people exposed to soil pollution. Using an ecological-symbolic approach (ESA), a multidisciplinary model is developed that draws upon psychological and sociological perspectives on risk perception and includes ecological variables by using data from experts' risk assessments. The results show that hazard perception is best predicted by objective knowledge, subjective knowledge, estimated knowledge of experts, and the assessed risks. However, experts' risk assessments induce an increase in hazard perception only when residents know the urgency of decontamination. Risk perception is best predicted by trust in the risk management. Additionally, need for decontamination relates to hazard perception, risk perception, estimated knowledge of experts, and thoughts about sustainability. In contrast to the knowledge deficit model, objective and subjective knowledge did not significantly relate to risk perception and need for decontamination. The results suggest that residents can make a distinction between hazards in terms of the seriousness of contamination on the one hand, and human health risks on the other hand. Moreover, next to the importance of social determinants of environmental risk perception, this study shows that the output of experts' risk assessments—or the objective risks—can create a hazard awareness rather than an alarming risk consciousness, despite residents' distrust of scientific knowledge.
The Question of Risk: Incorporating Community Perceptions into Environmental Risk Assessments
1994
The environmental justice movement has seen some successes. After years of neglect, the federal government and several states are directing legislative and executive efforts towards reforming siting processes and remedying discriminatory enforcement of environmental regulations. Community opposition in general has proved to be quite powerful in some instances. Since the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, there has been only one new siting of a hazardous waste landfill and few new sitings of hazardous waste incinerators. To a lesser extent, municipal solid waste and medical waste incinerators have also been successfully blocked or delayed. However, certain factors behind these successes suggest that procedural reforms of the siting process, though sorely needed, may not provide a complete solution to disparate dumping unless they also address the conflict over the nature of risk and how it is measured. This Article discusses the issues of perception of risk and citizen involvement in environmentally sensitive siting decisions. Part I describes the different phases of the siting process, i.e., the various determinations made at certain points during the process, the factors that enter into these calculations, and the interests implicated in each. Part II discusses the gap between citizens' and government agencies' understanding of environmental problems: what constitutes an acceptable risk, how risk is measured, and who makes these decisions. Part III sets out ways in which community groups can more effectively incorporate their concerns into the siting process and argues that public officials should give greater weight to public perceptions of risk.
Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 2002
Opinion polls were conducted to assess the level of risk perceived by the citizens in communities of different sizes where chemical industries were present. The aim of the study was to relate the risk perceived to variables such as the nature of risks, the specific information received regarding the industrial activity and the economic impact of this activity in the community.
Exploring lay uncertainty about an environmental health risk
Public Understanding of Science, 2007
How do laypeople perceive uncertainties about environmental health risks? How do risk-related cognitions and emotions influence these uncertainties, and what roles do sociodemographic and contextual factors, risk judgments, and information exposures play? This study explores these questions using secondary analyses of survey data. Results suggest that uncertainty reflects individual-level emotions and cognitions, but may also be shaped by a variety of social and contextual factors. Emotions (worry and anger) are strongly associated with perceived uncertainty, and perceived lack of knowledge and perceived likelihood of becoming ill are weakly associated with it. Several demographic variables, information exposures, and risk judgment variables affect perceived uncertainty indirectly, primarily through perceived knowledge and emotions. These findings raise a variety of questions about the complex and dynamic interactions among risk contexts, socioeconomic factors, communication processes, perceived knowledge, emotions, and perceived uncertainties about risks.
Fractured Environments: Diversity and conflict in perceptions of environmental risk
This paper reinforces existing notions that conflicts surrounding environmental risk are the result of seemingly contradictory theoretical approaches (realist and constructionist) and of diverse perceptions of environmental risk, which tend to reflect issues of power and status. It is suggested that an integrated theoretical approach may offer opportunities for the resolution and avoidance of conflict surrounding environmental risk. Proposals are made for the further development of cultural theory as a typology of orienting mechanisms that explain individuals' perceptions of environmental risk. The efficacy of the psychometric paradigm as an appropriate tool for the exploration of environmental risk perception is questioned and a future research agenda is proposed.
Environmental health communication differs from other health communication in important ways. I suggest that its distinctiveness is due to five qualities that are common, if not intrinsic, to these situations: distrust, uncertainty, empirical bias, entrenched belief systems, and activism. It is the interaction among these five elements that creates the interesting, frustrating and persistent social challenges distinctive to this field of public health. I draw on concepts from psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and health and risk communication. One assumption they all share is the general philosophical trend of the last 15 or 20 years toward what is called social construction (or deconstruction) of fact. Although the idea that facts are culturally constructed and socially maintained is now an intellectual trope in most humanistic disciplines, including the sociology of science, it is an idea that has been slow to be accepted by the practitioners of science and public healttl. However, the intense debates about environmental health issues provide a good demonstration of this theory's importance and applicability. Indeed, I will argue that unless all participants in these situations begin to understand the central role that interpretation, or belief, plays in these conflicts, real communication, and, thus, effective negotiation, cannot take place.
Locating hazardous waste facilities: The influence of NIMBY beliefs
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1994
Abstract. The‘Not-In-My-Backyard’ (NIMBY) syndrome is analyzed in economic decision making. Belief statements that reflect specific NIMBY concerns are subjected to factor analysis and the structure reveals two dimensions: tolerance and avoidance. Tolerance reflects an acceptance of rational economic arguments regarding the sitting of a hazardous waste facility and avoidance reflects a more personal fear of-consequences. Analysis identifies demographic characteristics of individuals likely to exhibit these two beliefs. These beliefs also are shown to influence the acceptance of a hazardous waste disposal facility in ones neighborhood when compensation is offered.