The huge paradox at the heart of how people think about environmental risksBy Chelsea Harvey
Washington Post
November 4
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n their study, published on Oct. 22 in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, the researchers found that villagers who were not directly involved with the mines (which were privately operated, not government-owned) perceived the risks associated with mining to be much higher, and were more likely to oppose the practice than people who actually worked in the mines and were more directly at risk of heavy-metal toxicity.
The researchers conducted the study by distributing questionnaires, which asked 220 local villagers questions about their level of concern for the effects of pollution on their village, crops and families; how much benefit they perceived themselves to be deriving from the mining operations; and whether they supported or opposed lead-zinc mining in the village.
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So it seemed counterintuitive to find, in the new psychology study, that people who are more directly involved with the mining process — and, thus, more susceptible to its risks — were less concerned.
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While such attitudes might be motivated by different factors in different cases, the researchers’ theory in the case of the lead-zinc mining community is that risk perception is driven by the perceived benefits of the risky activity. In other words, people who stand to benefit more from the mines themselves (for instance, by working and earning money from them) are more likely to perceive their dangers as being lower.
And, indeed, the researchers’ surveys showed that people who perceived more benefit from the mining also perceived less risk. People who saw less benefit perceived greater risk — and these people were also more likely to oppose lead-zinc mining in the community at all.
