Public environmental concern in China: Determinants and variations

How much are Chinese people and various citizen groups concerned about the environment relative to other major public problems? What are the key factors and to what extent do these factors shape individual Chinese environmental concern? Based on a micro-macro model and a county fixed model proposed in this study, we employ nationwide representative public opinion survey data and provincial statistics to examine the determinants and variations of public environmental concern in China. The data shows that environmental concern is not among the top-ranked issue concerns in China overall, but in the urban areas and in the east-coastal region environmental protection features as a rather important issue. Our regression analyses further demonstrate that the Chinese environmental concern is significantly affected by both micro-level socio-demographic variables and macro-level regional economic conditions and environmental risks. In the east-coastal region, such individuals as urbanites with high income are most environmentally concerned. There is a lack of concern over environmental issues among the public in the west region, where little association between individual sociodemographics and their environmental concern is detected. In the central-northeast region, education effect is evident in the rural area. Location contextual factors such as economic development and environmental risk account for most of the observed variations in public environment concern.     

Do natural science experiments influence public attitudes towards environmental problems?

We investigated the significance of risk assessment studies in the public discussion on CO₂ emissions. Politicians and representatives from the public where interviewed by using the social-science technique of qualitative in-depth interviews.Three different types of attitudes towards natural science were found among politicians. Depending on which attitude a politician holds, risk assessment studies can have an impact on his/her readiness to support environmental policy measures.Regarding lay people, key factors affecting the acceptance of environmental policy measures are knowledge of environmental problems, their impacts on ecosystems or human health as well as direct personal perception of those impacts. Since direct perception is not always possible in everyday life, natural science experiments might be a means for successfully mediating this lacking perception.     

Public concern about,and desire for research into,the human health effects of marine plastic pollution: Results from a 15-country survey across Europe and Australia

Marine plastic pollution is caused by humans and has become ubiquitous in the marine environment. Despite the widely acknowledged ecological consequences, the scientific evidence regarding detrimental human health impacts is currently debated, and there is no substantive evidence surrounding public opinion with respect to marine plastic pollution and human health. Results from a 15-country survey (n = 15,179) found that both the European and Australian public were highly concerned about the potential human health impacts of marine plastic pollution, and strongly supported the funding of research which aims to better understand its health/wellbeing implications. Multi-level modelling revealed that these perceptions varied across socio-demographic factors (e.g. gender), political orientation, marine contact factors (e.g. marine occupation and engagement in coastal recreation activities) and personality traits (e.g. openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness). Quantifying attitudes, as well as understanding how individual-level differences shape risk perception will enable policy makers and communicators to develop more targeted communications and initiatives that target a reduction in marine plastic pollution.     

基于雾霾案例的新媒体时代科学传播范式研究

新媒体环境下,以雾霾为切入点的环境问题迅速成为公众、媒体和政府关注的焦点,各利益相关方表现出对雾霾科学信息的不同需求。科学成果在传播内容及其表现形式、传播主体、传播路径等方面呈现出新的模式：成果传播的受众由少至多,成果传播的内容和形式不断多样化,成果数量呈现爆发式增长,更新速率不断加快,传播主体大众化,传播路径由单一向多元化转变;新媒体在有助于推动公众参与环境保护的同时,也给科学传播工作带来了挑战,建议有效利用新媒体的传播渠道,加强环境信息及科学知识的公开和普及,以提高环境保护和治理的能力。     

Understanding technological,cultural, and environmental motivators explaining the adoption of citizen science apps for coastal environment monitoring

Environmental and nature conservation authorities are calling for a collective effort to break or reduce the current cycle of environmental degradation. Much of the response depends on scientific knowledge production based on thematically and geographically comprehensive datasets. Citizen science (CS) is a cost-effective support tool for scientific research that provides means for building large and comprehensive datasets and promoting public awareness and participation. One of the greatest challenges of CS is to engage citizens and retain participants in the project. Our work addresses this challenge by (1) defining the role that technological, cultural, and environmental dimensions play in the adoption of CS apps for coastal environment monitoring, and (2) providing base knowledge about the profile of the apps’ most likely users and the functional features they require to be successful. Collectivists and people who assume a green identity are the most likely users of these apps. Drivers of their use are the promotion of citizen empowerment, habit development, provision of facilitating conditions, and proof of environmental performance.The outcome of this study is a set of guidelines for project managers, app developers, and policymakers for citizens’ engagement and retention in CS coastal environment monitoring projects through their apps.     

Changing places: The role of sense of place in perceptions of social,environmental and overdevelopment risks

An increasing focus on place based planning and adaptation processes brings to the fore the importance of understanding the situated experience of social and environmental change. Populations do not respond uniformly to environmental and social change, and given that consensus is needed to successfully achieve inclusive adaptation it is important to understand how and why people are more sensitive to certain changes and risks over others. Using a sense of place lens, we investigate how an individual’s relationship with their property and their town shapes their sensitivity to a range of risks. To investigate this, we conducted a survey in towns in South Africa, UK and France (n = 707) to examine the relationship between multiple dimensions of sense of place with place-based risks. We find that relationship with place matters differently for perception of social, environmental and overdevelopment risk. In particular, we find that feeling safe in place correlates with reduced perceptions of social risks but increases the likelihood of perceiving environmental risk. The role of place in risk perception is stronger at the property scale than the town scale, and it is only at the property scale that place meaning is related to risk perception. Our findings contribute to theory on the subjective experience of place-based risks and has implications for how social and environmental change can be communicated and managed.     

Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants and change over time

While scientific consensus and political and media messages appear to be increasingly certain, public attitudes and action towards the issue do not appear to be following suit. Popular and academic debate often assumes this is due to ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but some studies have suggested political beliefs and values may play a more important role in determining belief versus scepticism about climate change. The current research used two representative postal surveys of the UK public to: measure scepticism and uncertainty about climate change; determine how scepticism varies according to individual characteristics, knowledge and values; and examine how scepticism has changed over time. Findings show denial of climate change is less common than the perception that the issue has been exaggerated. Scepticism was found to be strongly determined by individuals’ environmental and political values (and indirectly by age, gender, location and lifestyle) rather than by education or knowledge. Between 2003 and 2008, public uncertainty about climate change has remained remarkably constant, although belief that claims about the issue are exaggerated has doubled over that period. These results are interpreted with reference to psychological concepts of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and ‘finite pool of worry’. Implications for communication and policy are discussed.     

Risk,wealth and agrarian change in India. Household-level hazards vs. late-modern global risks at different points along the risk transition

The global poor often prioritise immediate hazards of food insecurity over temporally more distant risks like global warming. Yet the influence of socio-economic factors, temporal and spatial distance on risk perception remains under-researched. Data on risk perception and response were collected from two sets of Indian villages. Participatory approaches were used to investigate variations by socio-economic status, food security, age and gender. Villagers’ risk priorities reflected clear spatial and temporal patterns depending on land ownership, community group and education levels. Poorer groups prioritised household-level risks to health and food security while global environmental risks were mentioned by only three of the wealthiest respondents. The paper concludes that household risk perceptions and responses vary greatly with socio-economic status, age, gender and the spatial or temporal distance of the risk. These factors need to be better understood if the most significant contributors to the global burden of disease are to be reduced.     

National-level factors affecting planned,public adaptation to health impacts of climate change

Our understanding of whether adaptive capacity on a national level is being translated into adaptation policies, programs, and projects is limited. Focusing on health adaptation in Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC, we examine whether statistically significant relationships exist between regulatory, institutional, financial, and normative aspects of national-level adaptive capacity and systematically measured adaptation. Specifically, we (i) quantify adaptation actions in Annex I nations, (ii) identify potential factors that might impact progress on adaptation and select measures for these factors, and (iii) calculate statistical relationships between factors and adaptation actions across countries. Statistically significant relationships are found between progress on adaptation and engagement in international environmental governance, national environmental governance, perception of corruption in the public sector, population size, and national wealth, as well as between responsiveness to health vulnerabilities, population size and national wealth. This analysis contributes two key early empirical findings to the growing literature concerning factors facilitating or constraining adaptation. While country size and wealth are necessary for driving higher levels of adaptation, they may be insufficient in the absence of policy commitments to environmental governance. Furthermore, governance and/or incentive frameworks for environmental governance at the national level may be an important indicator of the strength of national commitments to addressing health impacts of climate change.     

Adaptive and risk-based approaches to climate change and the management of uncertainty and institutional risk: The case of future flooding in England

This paper focuses on how scientific uncertainties about future peak flood flows and sea level rises are accounted for in long term strategic planning processes to adapt inland and coastal flood risk management in England to climate change. Combining key informant interviews (n = 18) with documentary analysis, it explores the institutional tensions between adaptive management approaches emphasising openness to uncertainty and to alternative policy options on the one hand and risk-based ones that close them down by transforming uncertainties into calculable risks whose management can be rationalized through cost-benefit analysis and nationally consistent, risk-based priority setting on the other hand. These alternative approaches to managing uncertainty about the first-order risks to society from future flooding are shaped by institutional concerns with managing the second-order, ‘institutional’ risks of criticism and blame arising from accountability for discharging those first-order risk management responsibilities. In the case of river flooding the poorly understood impacts of future climate change were represented with a simplistic adjustment to peak flow estimates, which proved robust in overcoming institutional resistance to making precautionary allowances for climate change in risk-based flood management, at least in part because its scientific limitations were acknowledged only partially. By contrast in the case of coastal flood risk management, greater scientific confidence led to successively more elaborate guidance on how to represent the science, which in turn led to inconsistency in implementation and increased the institutional risks involved in taking the uncertain effects of future sea level rise into account in adaptation planning and flood risk management. Comparative analysis of these two cases then informs some wider reflections about the tensions between adaptive and risk-based approaches, the role of institutional risk in climate change adaptation, and the importance of such institutional dynamics in shaping the framing uncertainties and policy responses to scientific knowledge about them.     

Operationalizing climate targets under learning: An application of cost-risk analysis

Reviewing the existing studies of public perception and drawing analogies from other risk technologies, this paper explores the public positions on research and implementation of geoengineering as a means to combat climate change. Existing studies on geoengineering perceptions show low levels of awareness and a lack of knowledge. Hence, existing attitudes on geoengineering can be judged instable and stimulus-dependent. When judged in isolation, at least one third favors the use of geoengineering technologies preferring CDR over SRM technologies; when judged in comparison to other climate mitigation options, approval rates lose considerably support. Moreover, people seem to cautiously support research but oppose deployment while attitude formation depends on personal values and belief systems. The results of the empirical studies were fed into a Delphi workshop with experts for reflecting on the future development of public opinion and for designing a communication and public involvement process that corresponds to the empirical insights gained from the perception studies.     

Procedural vulnerability: Understanding environmental change in a remote indigenous community

The challenge of reaching common understanding of the processes and significance of environmental change amounts to a procedural vulnerability in climate change research that hinders successfully translating knowledge into equitable and effective adaptation policy. This article presents findings from research with Indigenous participants in West Arnhem, Australia, and identifies a procedural vulnerability to climate change research, where perceptions of change and their meaning have their context in Dreaming that supersedes and parallels Western scientific discourses of hazard and risk, but that are marginalised in studies and policies on climate change. This paper argues that moves to adapt remote Indigenous Australian communities to climate change risk missing the mark if they (a) assume that a strong reliance on particular ecosystem configurations makes Indigenous cultures universally vulnerable to environmental change, (b) do not recognise cosmologically embedded risks that are determined by Indigenous capacity to take care of country, and (c) do not recognise colonisation as an ongoing disaster in Indigenous Nations, and therefore treat secondary disasters such as poverty, ill health and welfare dependence as primary contributors to high climate change vulnerability. Procedural vulnerabilities contribute to policy failure, and in Australian contexts pose a risk of conceiving solutions to climate change vulnerability that involve moving people out of the way of environmental risks as they are conceived within colonial traditions, while moving them into the way of risks as conceived through the eyes of remote Indigenous communities. This research joins recent publications that encourage researchers and policy-makers to epistemologically ground proof risk assessments and to listen and engage in conversations that create ways of ‘seeing with both eyes’, while not being blind to the hazards of colonisation.     

A new,valid measure of climate change understanding: associations with risk perception

The relationship between climate change understanding and other variables, including risk perception, beliefs, and worldviews, is an important consideration as we work to increase public attention to climate change. Despite significant effort to develop rigorous mechanisms for measuring affective variables, measurement of climate change understanding is often relegated to unvalidated questions or question sets. To remedy this situation, we constructed and analyzed a climate change concept inventory using a suite of validity and reliability steps, including Rasch analysis. The resultant 21-item test has a high degree of validity and reliability for measuring understanding about basic climate change processes. Inventory scores along with other variables were included in a model of climate change risk perception, providing both concurrent validity for the test and new insight into the importance of understanding, worldview, and values on risk perception. We find that environmental beliefs and cultural cognition worldview play a larger role in predicting an individual’s risk perception than knowledge. Implications for addressing climate change are considered.     

Analysis of Climate Change Indicators. Part 2. Northwestern Russia

Data on modern climate and environmental changes in the northwestern region of Russia are compared with the public perception of such changes. The analysis reveals that unusual weather patterns and single extreme events have a deeper impact on the public perception than long-term periods of climate change. The majority of population consider climate and environmental changes locally, do not associate them with global drivers, and are not prepared to adaptation. The numerical climate perception index is developed to characterize the awareness of population about the climate change and preparedness to adaptation. The index can be used for improving the awareness of policymakers for regional climate adaptation.     

乌鲁木齐河流域普通民众对冰冻圈变化的感知及适应性对策选择

基于乌鲁木齐河流域普通民众对气候变化及冰冻圈变化感知情况的问卷调查,结合有关监测研究结果,分析了普通民众对流域气候变化及冰冻圈变化的感知情况,探讨了环境变化对流域水资源和农业生产的可能影响.普通民众对气候变化和冰冻圈变化的感知基本与科学监测事实相符.对气候变化和冰冻圈变化条件下普通民众对水资源紧缺的适应措施的分析发现:...     

Level of environmental awareness towards depletion of the ozone layer among distributors and consumers in the solvent sector: a case study from Oman

The main objective of this study was to assess the level of environmental awareness among ozone depleting substances (ODSs) distributors and consumers in the solvent sector in the Arabian Gulf country of Oman. The focus was on ozone depleting substances that are usually released in cleaning, formulation solvent and process agent processes (CFC-113, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, CTC-carbon tetrachloride). A comparison between importers and end-users of ODSs and the public in relation to environmental awareness regarding ozone layer depletion was carried out. The results showed that environmental knowledge about ozone layer depletion was higher among the importers and end-users of ODSs than amongst the public. Nevertheless, there were much smaller differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors between the importers and end-users of ODSs, and the public toward ozone layer depletion. This showed that the public in the case study country has a very positive attitudes and behaviors towards the environment.     

高温热浪致死风险的人群和城市分异及保险费率厘定的研究

在全球变暖背景下,高温热浪事件在世界各地频繁发生且大大加剧了人群致死的风险。基于3个研究地区（南京、广州和重庆）1951—2015年的逐日气象数据和2007—2013年逐日死亡数据,首先设计了热浪强度指数来量化热浪特征;其次采用分布滞后非线性模型构建高温热浪灾害下人群的脆弱性模型;最后采用蒙特卡洛仿真方法模拟随机高温热浪事件,并在此基础上开展概率风险评估与高温热浪生命保险费率的厘定。研究发现：老年人的高温热浪死亡风险与对应的费率水平是年轻人的9~28倍;其中,高温热浪费率水平与社会经济发展水平呈反比,即经济发展水平较高的地区费率水平较低。该研究成果为指数生命/健康保险产品的研发,为政府采取综合性的风险管理措施以减少公众健康风险等提供了一定的借鉴和参考。     

辽宁省重点灌区的污染特征与环境风险研究

针对辽宁省污灌区污染现状,分析了沈抚和张士2个重点污灌区的环境风险。结果表明:长期污灌造成土壤、农作物和地下水的严重污染,沈抚灌区人群患病率明显高于对照区,且有逐年增高趋势,其中以肝肿大为主要疾病。张士灌区尿镉水平明显高于对照组,引起人群肾功能损伤。鉴于污灌区环境污染的复杂性与长期性,提出未来加快开展人体健康损害风险评估和区域健康风险研究重点。