Environmental Risk Perception Research Articles

High school students’ trust and risk perception of typhoon disaster: Moderating role of government ability in disaster management

Under global warming and environmental changes, coastal cities have witnessed significant typhoon disasters that attract considerable attention from scholars. Existing studies mainly focused on typhoon disaster prevention and reduction by examining the impact of the public's trust on risk perception. However, these studies overlooked the influence of government ability, even though government plays an important role in disaster management. Therefore, this study takes Ningbo, China as an example to analyze the impact of trust on risk perception and explore the role of government ability on the referred relationship. High school students are taken as the research targets as they are vulnerable but important in typhoon disaster mitigation, which may have been overlooked in existing studies. Regression is used to examine these relationships. The findings of this study are as follows. First, students' trust in meteorological departments, expert institutions, and government agencies positively impact economic, personal, and environmental risk perception. Second, government ability negatively moderates the relationships between students' trust in meteorological departments and expert institutions and all types of risk perception. Moreover, it only has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between students' trust in government agencies and economic risk perception. The study reveals the moderating role of government ability between trust and risk perception and provides references for further study on the relationship between trust and risk perception.

University student perception of sustainability and environmental issues

<abstract> <p>There is a global consensus among scientists that human-caused climate change is threatening the environment and communities worldwide and that major changes must be implemented to reduce the increasing rate of CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Moreover, environmentally unsustainable practices are both endangering and degrading the quality of life on Earth. One major and often underestimated aspect of this problem is the difference in individual environmental risk perception and evaluation. It is evident that the responsibility for Earth's future lies in the hands of young generations and raising their awareness of environmental issues is a substantial challenge for education institutions. Students need to develop new values, skills and behaviors to foster sustainable development. As institutions of higher education, universities have a major impact on society and play a key role in the development of environmental awareness in young people. The paper describes the results of a survey administered to students in the <italic>Cultural Geography B</italic> course at the University of Torino. The purpose of the analysis was to determine if there is a relationship between environmental perception, attitude and behavior. The results showed that the students had a good knowledge of and positive attitude to the environment. However, as past studies have already revealed, there is a gap between their awareness and proactive environmental behaviors. Knowledge does not appear to be the only variable needed and other hypotheses should be explored to change the behavior of young generations. This study provides some insights for implementing integrated sustainability processes and engaging students. Moreover, the results will support the structuring of a future <italic>Geography</italic> course that focuses on sustainable development and environmental risk.</p> </abstract>

Perception of environmental insurance risk vs. implementation of control measures in organizations managed according to ISO 14001:2015 in Poland

The numerous studies of risk perception to date have been focused on three different areas of the subject. Firstly, researchers have aimed at the identification of risk perception determinants, secondly, they have created recommendations on how to communicate the risk to society, and finally they have analysed the relationships between risk perception measures and the means of risk control implemented in organizations. The last indicated research area is complemented by the following paper. On the basis of data derived from online interviews it was concluded that the higher the assessment of the measures of environmental insurance risk perception, the more frequently organizations implemented selected means of risk control in the environmental management system according to ISO 14001 (EMS ISO 14001). The largest number of statistically significant dependencies were observed in the area of variables which describe the informative potential of EMS ISO 14001 (informative potential variables) and those which directly determine the volume of environmental insurance risk (the volume of risk variables). Simultaneously, not all categories of risk perception measures are equally related to the frequency of risk control means implementation. A particularly large number of statistically significant correlations were identified for the following variable: the evaluation of the likelihood of the occurrence of environmental damage.

Stakeholders' Perceptions of Environmental and Public Health Risks Associated with Hydrocarbon Activities in and around the Vasilikos Energy Center, Cyprus.

: Background and aimThe Vasilikos Energy Center (VEC) is a large hydrocarbon industrial hub actively operating in Cyprus. There is strong public interest by the communities surrounding VEC to engage with all stakeholders towards the sustainable development of hydrocarbon in the region. The methodological framework of the exposome concept would allow for the holistic identification of all relevant environmental exposures by engaging the most relevant stakeholders in industrially contaminated sites. The main objectives of this study were to: (i) evaluate the stakeholders’ perceptions of the environmental and public health risks and recommended actions associated with the VEC hydrocarbon activities, and (ii) assess the stakeholders’ understanding and interest towards exposome-based technologies for use in oil and gas applications. Methods: Six major groups of stakeholders were identified: local authorities, small-medium industries (SMIs) (including multi-national companies), small-medium enterprises (SMEs), academia/professional associations, government, and the general public residing in the communities surrounding the VEC. During 2019–2021, a suite of stakeholder engagement initiatives was deployed, including semi-structured interviews (n = 32), a community survey for the general public (n = 309), technical meetings, and workshops (n = 4). Results from the semi-structured interviews, technical meetings and workshops were analyzed through thematic analysis and results from the community survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: Almost all stakeholders expressed the need for the implementation of a systematic health monitoring system for the VEC broader area and its surrounding residential communities, including frequent measurements of air pollutant emissions. Moreover, stricter policies by the government about licensing and monitoring of hydrocarbon activities and proper communication to the public and the mass media emerged as important needs. The exposome concept was not practiced by the SMEs, but SMIs showed willingness to use it in the future as part of their research and development activities. Conclusions: The sustainable development of hydrocarbon exploitation and processing prospects for Cyprus involves the VEC. Continuous and active collaboration and mutual feedback among all stakeholders involved with the VEC is essential, as this may allow future environmental and occupational health initiatives to be formalized.

Judging Pharmaceutical Environmental Risk by its Cover? The Effects of Prescription Medication and Disease Severity on Environmental Risk Perception.

Recent wastewater analyses performed in care homes for the elderly showed high levels of water pollution resulting from pharmaceutical waste. The way people perceive the environmental risk of pharmaceuticals can contribute to reversing this problem, but the factors that influence risk perception remain relatively unknown. The aims of the study are two-fold. We first focused on exploring the levels of knowledge regarding environment/water pollution due to pharmaceutical residues from the groups responsible for prescribing (health professionals), handling (staff), and consuming pharmaceuticals (residents) in care homes for the elderly. Second, we assessed the environmental risk perception of pharmaceuticals based on two main factors: prescription medication (nonprescribed versus prescribed) and disease severity (milder versus severe disease), accounting for their level of knowledge (deficit versus sufficiency of knowledge). The study was designed based on correlational research. Data were collected in homes for the elderly located in three Southwestern European countries (N = 300), using self-report surveys. Current knowledge was perceived to be low and the need to know more was perceived to be high, across all groups. As hypothesized, results indicated that to assess the environmental risk, participants made use of information that was unrelated to pharmaceutical persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (PBT). Prescribed pharmaceuticals and/or medication used to treat severe diseases were perceived as being more hazardous for the environment. Simple main effects analysis comparing between knowledge levels confirmed that this effect occurred mostly when participants had knowledge deficit for disease severity but not for prescription medication. These misconceptions might discourage taking an active role in reducing the impact of pharmaceutical residues in the environment.

Cultural worldviews consistently explain bundles of ecosystem service prioritisation across rural Germany

AbstractDifferences in ecosystem service (ES) priorities often lead to conflicts between stakeholders. While differences in priorities have often been described, the sociocultural factors, including differences in cultural worldview, which drive them have not. We propose that the cultural theory of risk and its ‘grid‐group’ typology, which classifies people as individualists, hierarchists, egalitarians and fatalists, can provide a conceptual framework for doing this.We examined the relationship between ES prioritisation by stakeholders and underlying cultural (cultural worldviews, and related environmental nature and risk perceptions), sociocultural (region, stakeholder group, political party preference) and socio‐demographic factors. This was achieved by applying multivariate statistics to data from a survey with 321 respondents, conducted across 14 stakeholder groups in three German regions.Results show that most stakeholders prioritised many services but gave the highest priority to services linked to their stakeholder group. We identified four ‘ES priority bundles’: cultural services, open‐land provisioning services, environmental protection services and forest provisioning services.Each ES priority bundle was consistently associated with particular cultural worldviews, perceptions of nature and sociocultural factors, meaning that we could identify ‘cultural types’. Two of these associations were particularly strong: Prioritisation of open‐land provisioning ES was high for the agriculture stakeholder group, associated with individualism, a perception of nature as durable but unpredictable, and support for economic liberal, conservative political parties. In contrast, those who prioritised environmental protection tended to hold egalitarian cultural worldviews and perceive nature as tolerant and sensitive. They also often belonged to the research and nature conservation stakeholder groups, with a mostly left‐leaning political party preference.The identification of cultural types of stakeholder with consistent ES priorities and cultural worldviews may provide a useful construct in the future ES research. Furthermore, it may allow communications regarding ES to be tailored to improve their effectiveness, potentially aiding the promotion of sustainable management strategies.A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Escaping Air Pollution: Do Chinese Students and Immigrants Drive Property Prices and Economic Activity Abroad?

We construct a time-series of news coverage about air pollution in China for the period 1977-2019, and verify that such abnormal news coverage is associated with worse air quality in major Chinese cities, for which information is available for a shorter period. We find that that cross-border migration of Chinese citizens, the number of Chinese students going abroad to study, as well as capital flight from China, increase when there is an unexpected increase in air pollution news coverage. We find that U.S. regions with stronger historical ethnic ties to China experience higher property price growth when the innovation in air pollution news coverage is higher. We find similar results for residential prices in international cities. Air-pollution driven student inflows increase property prices and employment growth in regions that are major destinations of foreign students. Our study suggests that perception of local environmental and climate risk can have major consequences for the cross-border relocation of capital and labor.

Place attachment satisfies psychological needs in the context of environmental risk coping: Experimental evidence of a link between self-determination theory and person-place relationship effects

The present paper aims to provide some empirical evidence of how the ability of places to satisfy psychological needs might be an antecedent for the creation of an affective bond with those places by using visualization techniques for place attachment manipulation and exploring the similarities between two main frames of reference in literature, place attachment literature and Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The paper has three main hypotheses: 1) showing that the basic needs hypothesized by SDTand those hypothesized by Place Attachment Literature are both affected by place features and have similar affective and behavioral outcomes; 2) showing that the ability of a place to satisfy individual's needs is associated with the individual attachment to the place; 3) showing that the place attachment developed by the perception of needs satisfaction affects individual's place-related behaviors.Two experimental studies were conducted manipulating place attachment toward a new evacuation site in a virtual location affected by natural hazards, with two scenario manipulations. One manipulation is realized on the basis of the needs emerged by place attachment literature taxonomies. The second manipulation aims to the same target on the basis of Self-Determination Theory. Study 1 shows that both manipulations affect psychological need satisfaction and place attachment; Study 2 shows that they also affect risk coping place-related behavior. Results confirm the three hypotheses and shed light on how psychological needs satisfaction is linked to place attachment and its practical relevance for environmental risk perception and coping in natural hazard contexts, possibly improving risk coping plans in emergency situations and, ultimately, saving lives. Moreover, these results could be applied also to other settings, like shelters or temporary settlements improving wellness conditions in these environments.

Environmental Risk Perception and Preventive Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Central Taiwan.

Due to traffic and industrial and seasonal air pollution, wearing masks outside the home has long been a daily habit for many people in Taiwan. After the emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which has an incubation period of up to 14 days, wearing masks and maintaining social distancing was advised to reduce exposure to this new environmental risk. This study investigates open and semi-open spaces in three districts in central Taiwan, using a non-participant observation method, with the aim of understanding people’s mask-wearing behavior. The results indicate that mask-wearing rates were higher in urban areas than in rural ones and among females than males. By age cohort, mask-wearing was most prevalent among young adults and middle-aged people and least prevalent among minors, with the elderly occupying a middle position. Masks were also more likely to be worn in semi-open spaces than in open ones. This study enriches our understanding of environmental risk perception of the pandemic and of public perceptions, which are vital to increasing the adoption of preventative measures.

Impact of a country’s logistical capabilities on supply chain risk

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the relationship between environmental factors, risk perception and decision-making in risk management. Specifically, using attribution theory, the authors study the influence of macro-level logistical capabilities of a host country on a firm’s actual and perceived supply chain risk, and examine if this country-level factor and the firm level perception of risk affect a firm’s decision-making in risk management.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a combination of primary data from 932 manufacturing firms from 22 countries and secondary data from the logistics performance index (LPI), and empirically tests the conceptual framework using partial least squares structural equation modeling.FindingsKey results reveal that a country’s logistical capabilities, measured using LPI, have a significant impact on managers’ risk perception. Firms located in countries with high LPI perceive lower risk in their supply chain both in the upstream and downstream, and therefore do not invest much in external integration, compared to firms in low LPI countries, and hence are exposed to high risk.Originality/valueThis is one of the first empirical studies linking a country’s logistical capabilities with supply chain risk perceptions, objective supply chain risk and supply chain risk management efforts of a firm using the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database.

Influencing Factors of Environmental Risk Perception during the COVID-19 Epidemic in China.

The spread of COVID-19 is having a serious impact on socioeconomic development, and increased environmental risk perception (ERP). ERP provide new ideas for the orderly recovery of society. However, there have been studies that often pay attention to individual factors, and less concerned about the external environment. In fact, ERP will be affected by the external environment and individual factors. We used a Python script to collect 65,277 valid Weibo comments during the COVID-19 epidemic in China to assess urban residents’ environmental risk perception (ERP). SnowNLP emotion analysis was used to measure the ERP of 366 urban in China, and the structural proportion characteristics and spatial-temporal differentiation of ERP were analyzed. Then, an order logistic regression model was used to investigate the relationship between economic level, social security, medical facilities and ERP. The study investigated the Chinese cities have a higher ERP during the COVID-19 period, and it shows marked fluctuations. As COVID-19 spreads, the ERP shows a distribution pattern of “high in the southeast and low in the northwest” with Hu line as the boundary and “from high to low” with Wuhan as the high value center. COVID-19 serves as catalysts for ERP, the impact of COVID-19 is enhanced after socioeconomic factors are considered. The economic level effectively regulates ERP, except the stage of accelerating diffusion. ERP is effectively stabilized by social security and medical facilities. After considering all the variables simultaneously, we found that the mitigation effect of social security and medical facilities on ERP has improved.

Perceived Risk in the Population Living near the Turin Incinerator: Comparison between before and at Three Years of Operation.

When the Turin incinerator went into operation in 2013, it was accompanied by surveillance of health effects that included a human biomonitoring survey of 394 residents. They responded to items investigating their awareness of environmental and health issues and perception of environmental health risks. In this study, we compared the questionnaire responses before plant startup and at 3 years of operation. To accomplish this, we investigated changes in perceived risk and evaluated the efficacy of communication strategies. A total of 344 participants equally distributed in an exposed and an unexposed group responded to the follow-up questionnaire. Survey items investigated the perception of a relationship between illness and exposure to environmental pollution, feeling at risk of developing an illness, and concern about natural and anthropogenic hazards. The proportion of ‘certain’ and ‘very probable’ responses was compared to the total using the difference-in-differences method. Analyses showed an overall decrease in the differences between the two groups, which suggests that the communication actions undertaken for the exposed group were effective. Future communication plans should also include initiatives targeting the unexposed group.

When apologies become meaningful: Perceptions of apologies in environmental justice communities

In the United States, people of color from low income and working-class backgrounds are at disproportionate risk to pollution and other environmental stressors. These environmental justice communities (EJCs) can also experience increased risk when a natural disaster collides with a preexisting environmental risk. The current research is an exploratory field study that examines perceptions of environmental risk after a natural disaster and how meaningful a public apology would be in three communities. Residents (N = 161) in two EJCs and a community without documented risks reported their environmental concerns and perceptions of public apologies. Overall, EJC residents reported greater concern about chemical hazard exposure than did residents with decreased risk. Furthermore, chemical exposure concerns facilitated public apology meaningfulness within the EJCs, but not in the decreased risk community.

Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America.

BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s perception of environmental health hazards is a powerful driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors and can also inform the development of effective and more sustainable environmental health policies. To date, no instruments are available to assess risk perception of environmental health hazards in South America even though there are many concerning issues in the region, including mining. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to adapt and validate an environmental health risk perception questionnaire in a Chilean population affected by mining activity among other risks frequently reported in Latin American countries and included the collection of information on trust on public information sources. METHODS: We adapted an Australian risk perception questionnaire for validation in an adult population from a Chilean mining community. This adaptation included two blinded translations (direct, inverse), a pre-test study (n = 20) and a review by environmental health experts. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) was used to identify factors within major domains of interest. The Bartlett test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and the Cronbach α test were used to assess the instrument’s validity and reliability. The instrument was pilot tested in 205 adults from a mining community in Chañaral. RESULTS: The final adapted questionnaire proved to be a good instrument to measure risk perception in a community chronically exposed to mining waste. For community risks, four factors explained 59.4% of the variance. “Global Issues” (30.2%) included air pollution, contamination of mining, ozone layer depletion and vector diseases. For personal risks, the first two components explained 59.5% of the variance, the main factor (36.7%) was “unhealthy behaviors within the household”. For trust in information, the first factor (36.2%) included as main sources “Media and authorities”. The Cronbach α ranged between 0.68 and 0.75; and the KMO test between 0.7 to 0.79 for community and personal risks and trust. CONCLUSIONS: The final questionnaire is a simple, reliable and useful instrument that can assist in evaluating environmental health risk perceptions in Latin American countries.

Environmental risk perception of mothers and presence of risk factors in rural and urban areas in Adana, Turkey

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional study with an open-ended manner aimed (1) to evaluate the environmental risk perception levels of mothers having at least one child and living in Adana and (2) to determine their awareness of the risk factors in their environment. Of mothers, 30.2% did not know the concept of environmental risk factor. Most frequent perceived risks were violence (17%), air pollution (15.5%) and undefined pollution (15%). The most common mentioned problems in their environment were air pollution (9.9%), violence (7.9%) and municipal service problems (8.4%). Mothers living in the urban area reported more violence, air pollution and undefined pollution as environmental threats than those living in the countryside. The place of residence, the education level of the mother and the number of people in the house significantly were related with the risk perception. There is a need for studies in other regions to determine the environmental literacy of mothers.

Sustainable consumption behavior of Europeans: The influence of environmental knowledge and risk perception on environmental concern and behavioral intention

This study explores how environmental knowledge and risk perception influence individuals' sustainable consumption behavior through the mediation of environmental concern and behavioral intention. The study combines constructs from earlier studies to form a novel theoretical model, which is tested and validated with an open data set from the Environment III 2010 module, which was collected by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Our sample consists of respondents from nine countries (N = 11,675) in the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The model indicates that environmental risk perception and environmental knowledge impact environmental concern significantly. Furthermore, environmental concern strongly influences behavioral intention, and these constructs, in turn, act as mediators of sustainable consumption behavior. The findings indicate that in Europe, sustainable consumption behavior can be associated with environmental concern, which is influenced by increased levels of environmental knowledge and environmental risk perception. The results provide a basis for future analyses once the Environment IV module is released. This will be of particular importance for tracking possible changes in the sustainable consumption behavior of Europeans when transitioning to a green and circular economy that is driven by the European Green Deal and EU Circular Economy Action Plan.

Research on the impact of environmental risk perception and public participation on evaluation of local government environmental regulation implementation behavior

Based on the data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2015 (CGSS2015),this paper studies the impact of environmental risk perception and public participation on the evaluation of local government environmental regulation implementation behavior, by constructing a structural equation model to analyze the relationship among the three above . The results show that environmental risk perception has a negative effect on the evaluation of local government environmental regulation implementation behavior, while public participation has a positive effect on the evaluation;The improvement of environmental governance satisfaction can effectively strengthen effectiveness of local government environmental regulation implementation behavior, which plays a significant role as a mediator between environmental risk perception, public participation behavior and the evaluation of local environmental regulation implementation behavior; Public environmental knowledge and institutional trust have an effect on the evaluation of environmental regulation enforcement behavior, and also have different moderating effects between the relationship between environmental risk perception, public participation and environmental regulation enforcement behavior evaluation. Therefore, the government should pay more attention to the public environmental risk perception, strengthen the coordination mechanism of multiple entities and improve the environmental governance system, so as to ensure the effectiveness of public participation, improve the efficiency of environmental regulation implementation, and improve the quality of government environmental governance and public satisfaction.

Under the COVID-19 Environment, Will Tourism Decision Making, Environmental Risks, and Epidemic Prevention Attitudes Affect the People's Firm Belief in Participating in Leisure Tourism Activities?

The study was conducted to understand the travel intentions of Dajia Matsu pilgrimage participants through tourism decision making, environmental risk perception, epidemic prevention attitude, and physical and mental health assessment. A questionnaire survey was used to collect 230 questionnaires in the field during the 2021 pilgrimage, and structural analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 20.0 statistical programs. The results showed that environmental risk and physical and mental health awareness were not significantly associated with the travel intention of Dajia Matsu pilgrimage participants (p > 0.05), while travel decision and attitude toward epidemic prevention were significantly associated with travel intention (p < 0.05).

Perception Analysis of Airport Noise on Environment, Sosial, and Economic at Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport

The increase in aircraft noise is an inevitable impact of Halim Perdanakusuma Airport (HLP) commercial operations since 2014. The perception of noise risk from people living around airports is a factor that must be considered for formulating strategic, comprehensive airport noise control plans and policies, and participatory. The purpose of this study is to analyze the noise conditions and the perception of environmental noise risk to the perception of socioeconomic risks that live around the HLP Airport. The results of the WECPNL calculation in area of Jaticempaka and Makasar was ranged between 73.80—79.72. The environmental noise risk of the community in HLP Airport’s vicinity was studied from knowledge aspects, perception aspects, and behavior aspects. Most of respondent were in the moderate category of environmental noise risk knowledge and environmental noise risk perception. While for environmental noise risk behavior aspects most respondent were in the low category. The social and economic risk perception for most respondent were in the moderate category. The conclusion of this research is that the community settlements in HLP Airport’s vicinity at the distance of 300 m and 600 m does not meet the environmental noise standard for a residential area which is regulated at 55 dB(A). The ideal area for settlement use in the vicinity of HLP Airport is Makassar area which is located 600 m from HLP Airport’s runway.

Environmental transparency and investors' risk perception: Cross‐country evidence on multinational corporations' sustainability practices and cost of equity

AbstractWe explore whether a greater amount of environmental disclosure can reduce a firm's ex ante cost of equity. This could occur because the quantity of environmental information changes investors' risk perception of the company, thereby influencing its ex ante cost of equity. Our study is a cross‐country analysis of 1481 multinational corporations (MNCs) across 43 countries and territories from 2013 to 2019. Firstly, we measure investors' risk perception as a firm's ex ante cost of equity by employing five different valuation models, all based on equity analysts' forecasted data. We then investigate whether large quantities of environmental information disclosed by an MNC affect its ex ante cost of equity. We find evidence that investors price the amount of environmental disclosure. More environmental disclosure decreases a firm's ex ante cost of equity because it lessens investors' information asymmetry. However, this relationship is non‐linear. Once the amount of environmental disclosure data exceeds a certain threshold level, a firm's ex ante cost of equity will rise again. Our empirical results also suggest that non‐financial factors at the country level play a role in shaping how investors perceive a firm's riskiness. Locating the firm in a country with better environmental performance and a higher score of the human development index can reduce investors' risk perception and result in a lower ex ante cost of equity. A policy implication of our findings is that a global standardised and effective corporate sustainability reporting is needed to provide investors a more holistic view for evaluating the riskiness of their investments.