The influence of the public’s prior knowledge on their acceptance of risk control method for contaminated sites: A case study in China

Alexandria Engineering Journal

卷:61

Wentao Jiao¹  Ning Ding²  Yinqing Fang²  Xiaonuo Li²  Shiyu Wang² 

[1] Corresponding author.;

[2] Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China;

关键词: Contaminated sites;    Risk control;    Perception;    Emotion;    Acceptance;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

As an emerging approach that aims to control, mitigate or prevent the risk of contaminated sites by cutting off the transmission routes of pollutants, risk control method has become an economic choice for researchers and governors to manage the contaminated sites. However, the public’s acceptance is at a relatively low level, and investigation into how to increase this is needed. In this study, a focus group interview was conducted to identify the dimensions of the public’s risk and benefit perception regarding the use of risk control method for contaminated sites. Using data from an online survey of 418 residents in Tianjin, a city in desperate need of this method for contaminated sites, structural equation modeling was used to examine the influence mechanism of public’s knowledge of soil pollution on their acceptance of it. The results included the following points: (1) The improvement of the public’s soil pollution knowledge causes the overestimation of risks and the underestimation of benefits regarding risk control method, which then decrease of their acceptance of it. (2) knowledge triggered emotional judgement rather than rational judgement works in their decision-making process. The study concludes that science-based propaganda should be strengthened to eliminate residents’ concerns about the environment, health, and the government’s regulations, and their negative emotion should be specially taken into account when developing projects using this method. This study innovatively explored the public’s cognitive mechanisms in relation to risk control method from both rational and emotional perspectives.

【 授权许可】

Unknown