Understanding Chinese Environmental Risk Perceptions from 1995–2015

Abstract

China has experienced a dramatic economic growth accompanied by a massive environmental degradation over the past four decades. This unprecedented level of environmental devastation has taken a toll on both public health and economic development. Being faced with severe environmental pollution, how does the Chinese public perceive its environment? In this chapter, by utilizing data from two sources including the World Values Surveys (WVS) and Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Surveys, the author first describes the general trends of Chinese environmental views from 1995–2015, and then examines how Chinese public perceptions of air pollution, water pollution, and global climate change fluctuated between 2008 and 2015 based on the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys. Additionally, the author uses the 2013 Pew Global Attitudes Survey to depict geographic variations of environmental perceptions across the population-concentrated region. Lastly, the author analyzes the 2013 Pew survey and reveals that income is the most consistent positive factor determining perceptions of air pollution, water pollution, and global climate change. Meanwhile, the second most dominant factor is education that has positive effects on both perceptions of water pollution and global climate change. The author concludes this chapter by summarizing the findings and indicating policy implications of these results. Moreover, the author suggests that future studies of Chinese environmental perceptions should consider a more comprehensive list of explanatory variables including contextual variables such as objective environmental measures and economic indicators.