School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Jan 21;16(2):287. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16020287.
Haze pollution has become the most serious environmental risk in China and generated a large amount of public concerns. Influencing almost all the citizens in the polluted area, it is necessary and important to take public perception as an essential element in haze abatement. From the perspective of social psychology, this paper explores haze tolerance in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, also the key influential factors on haze tolerance from four dimensions: political trust, perceived risk, cost perception, and haze knowledge. Based on the sample of 517 respondents, the results show that compared with Shanghai and Guangzhou, Beijing residents had the lowest tolerance level of haze pollution but have the highest levels of trust in the government's capacity to control haze and self-evaluation of their own haze knowledge. People in Shanghai had the lowest cost perception and the strongest willingness to acquire haze knowledge. Meanwhile, the empirical analysis revealed that political trust and cost perception could enhance the public's haze tolerance while perceived risk and haze knowledge had negative impacts on tolerance. Also, our research could provide some suggestions to government officials when making policies for abating haze pollution from the perspective of social risk control. Policy makers are supposed to launch various policy instruments to control haze effectively and engage the citizens in the decision-making process to improve their political trust, and publicize the knowledge of haze pollution to help the public to acquire objective and scientific knowledge and diminish unnecessary worries.
雾霾污染已成为中国最严重的环境风险，引起了公众的广泛关注。由于雾霾几乎影响到了所有污染地区的公民，因此将公众认知作为减轻雾霾的一个基本要素是必要且重要的。本文从社会心理学的角度出发，探讨了北京、上海和广州的雾霾容忍度，以及从政治信任、感知风险、成本感知和雾霾知识四个维度影响雾霾容忍度的关键因素。基于 517 名受访者的样本，结果表明，与上海和广州相比，北京居民对雾霾污染的容忍度最低，但对政府治理雾霾能力的信任度和自我评估的雾霾知识水平最高。上海居民的成本感知最低，获取雾霾知识的意愿最强。同时，实证分析表明，政治信任和成本感知可以提高公众对雾霾的容忍度，而感知风险和雾霾知识则对容忍度有负面影响。此外，我们的研究还可以从社会风险控制的角度为政府官员在制定雾霾治理政策时提供一些建议。政策制定者应该采取各种政策手段来有效控制雾霾，并让公众参与决策过程，以提高他们的政治信任，宣传雾霾污染知识，帮助公众获得客观和科学的知识，减少不必要的担忧。
