Environmental risk perception among race and ethnic groups in the United States

Abstract

We examine varying levels of perceived environmental risks among nine U.S. race and ethnic group categories using the 2010 General Social Survey. Three interrelated questions motivate our analysis. First, how does the environmental risk perception of air pollution, water pollution, agricultural chemicals, climate change and nuclear power generation vary among specific categories of race and ethnicity? Second, to what degree are higher levels of perceived risk among immigrant-origin groups subject to change as a result of cultural assimilation over generations? And third, to what degree are race and ethnic differences in environmental risk perception a reflection of other possibly more significant factors such as education, income, gender and conservative political views? Though we find some evidence for attitude assimilation among generations of Mexican-origin people, the dominant pattern is greater perceived risks among non-whites than whites across generations in the U.S. Additionally, not only did race and ethnic groups show greater concern for the threats posed by climate change and nuclear power generation than whites, they also expressed more concern about these two topics than they did for more localized issues such as air pollution emanating from industry and transportation. Despite our statistical controls for socioeconomic status, race and ethnic categories remained strong independent predictors of perceived environmental threats.