Public perceptions of environmental risk in China

Lei Zhanga,b, Gui-zhen Hec*, Arthur P.J. Mola,b and Yong-long Luc

aSchool of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing,China; bEnvironmental Policy Group, Department of Social Sciences, WageningenUniversity, Wageningen, The Netherlands; cState Key Laboratory of Urban and RegionalEcology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing, China

(Received 11 December 2011; final version received 21 May 2012)

China, as a ‘double risk’ society, is in urgent need for effective environmentalrisk management systems. Compared with other risks, man-made environmentalrisks have not been given due weight. Public awareness and perceptions of envi-ronmental risks are crucial in all phases of effective risk management. However,little is known about public perceptions of environmental risks in China. Tocontribute to better understanding of public perception of environmental risk, aquestionnaire survey was conducted among university students in Beijing, whorepresent a group with high level of education and a generally high sensitivityto new information. The results show that even this group has limited knowl-edge about environmental risks and current risk management systems. Furtherstudies are needed to understand the social construction of environmental risksin China and to seek ways to involve the Chinese public in emergency responseand risk management.

Keywords: environmental risk management; risk perception; university students;China

Introduction

As we have reviewed elsewhere (He, Zhang et al. 2011), since the 1980s, China’smodernization process has been accompanied by the emergence of an increasingnumber of man-made environmental risks and accidents. In total, 33,387 environ-mental accidents were counted in China between 1991 and 2010 (Editorial Commit-tee of China Environmental Yearbook 1992–2011) and during the last years, inparticular, the number of major environmental and chemical accidents increased.According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), the number of envi-ronmental accidents of 2011 reached 542, which appears to be a steep increase from135 environmental accidents in 2008, 171 in 2009, and 156 in 2010. The ChineseAcademy for Environmental Planning (CAEP 2010) reported recently that its mostrecent estimate of the annual cost of direct environmental damage was 1.4 trillionyuan (US $220 billion) in 2009, up 9.2% from the year before, excluding costs ofpublic health and lost productivity from farmland contaminated with heavy metals.

*Corresponding author. Email: heguizh@yahoo.com.cn

Journal of Risk Research, 2013Vol. 16, No. 2, 195–209, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2012.726240

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Take for example the month July 2010: on 3 July, the acid poisoning in TingRiver in the southern province of Fujian was reported, due to a leakage ofwastewater, killing nearly two million kilograms of fish and putting local popula-tions at severe risk; 16 July showed the explosion of an oil pipe line in Dalian, anda major explosion of an abandoned plastic factory in the center of Nanjing; and on28 July, 7000 barrels of chemicals from two chemical plants flooded into SonghuaRiver. The last accident reminded local victims of the major benzene pollution overSonghua River in 2005, although this time the barrels contained 3-methyl chloridesilane and hexamethyl disilazane. In response, the MEP announced to start a two-month ‘crackdown storm’ to check and regulate hidden pollution risks in petro-chemical enterprises along all river basins, involving rigorous inspection of morethan 400,000 chemical plants. Despite these efforts, the situation hardly improvedin 2011. The June 2011, oil spill by ConocoPhillips at Bohai Sea polluted 5500km2. In August 2011, 5000 tons of toxic chromium tailings, dumped on a hill byLuliang Chemicals in the township of Yuezhou in Yunnan province, caused waterpollution, resulted in fish and livestock poisoning, endangered the drinking water oftens of millions of people, and attracted media attention across China. On 15 Janu-ary 2012, a spill of 20 tons of cadmium into Longjiang River in the southern regionof Guangxi was discovered, which was the most serious heavy metal pollutionaccident in China so far.

Risk management – a long neglected issue on public and political agendas –became a hotly debated topic in many countries, including China. How well isChina actually prepared for such a risk era? China has only recently begun torespond to the increasing risks associated with its current industrialized mode ofdevelopment. Arguably, two major events triggered and accelerated the developmentof a Chinese risk management (or rather, emergency response) system: the SevereAcute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) episode in 2003 and the chemical spill in theSonghua River in November 2005. While it is commonly agreed that the spread ofSARS in 2003 popularized the terms ‘state of emergency’ and ‘emergencyresponse,’ and increased awareness of the need to construct a national risk manage-ment system, the notorious chemical spill in the Songhua River in 2005 marked thetake-off of environmental risk management in China (Ding 2009; He, Lu, andZhang 2009; He, Zhang et al. 2011; Mol, He, and Zhang 2011; Zhang and Zhong2010). Subsequent years have seen the promulgation and implementation of theNational Emergency Response Plan (2006), the Environmental EmergencyResponse Plan (2006), China’s Emergency Response Law (2007), China’s OpenGovernment Information Regulations (2008), and the Environmental InformationDisclosure Decree (2008), to name just a few.

In this time period, environmental risk management has also become a popularfield of inquiry in China. Many studies focused on legislation, policies, and mecha-nisms around emergency responses, on the role of professional and publicly avail-able information in risk management, on the organization of risk management, onthe distribution of responsibilities in risk prevention and management, etc. (Li et al.2010; Mol et al. 2011; Qi and Yang 2006; Qu et al. 2009; Zeng 2005; Zhang andZhong 2010). One of the conclusions on environmental risk management in Chinawas that public participation in environmental risk management was largely lacking.To the extent that there is environmental risk management in China, it is mainly inthe hands of professionals and public authorities, without significant involvement ofthe wider public. Not only are opportunities missed to involve the public with early

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warning signals on environmental risks, the lack of communication may also causeunnecessary chaos in case of emergencies, and leads to distrust and a loss of legiti-macy of risk management systems and authorities.

This was well illustrated by the case of ‘Xiangshui escape’ in Jiangsu province,where a rumor spread that a chemical plant nearby would explode. At 2:00 am inthe morning of 10 February 2011, more than 10,000 local residents suddenly ranfor their lives and four people died in the stampede. Poor communications, long-standing distrust of governmental authorities, and the chemical company werebehind this fatal tragedy.

If local citizens had access to better information about environmental risks andsystems in place to contain accidents, the tragedy might have been avoided. Interna-tional scholars and practitioners increasingly conclude that environmental risks arebest handled with the involvement and participation of all concerned citizens at thedifferent stages of environmental risk management: risk identification and assess-ment, the development and implementation of risk policy and management (includ-ing prevention and preparedness), emergency response, and risk communication(e.g. United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP] 1992). However, effectivepublic involvement and participation will not take place automatically; it needs tobe institutionally enabled and facilitated.

Although some previous studies have revealed to some extent about the environ-mental attitudes of the general public or a specific social category in China (Cao,Chen, and Liu 2009; Harris 2004; Hong 1997, 2005, 2007), there has been littleresearch on how the public perceives environmental risks and the current risk man-agement systems (Duan 2009; Lai and Tao 2003; Lu, Luo, and Lu 2010; Zhang1993; Zhang, Ge et al. 2010). Unfortunately, risk awareness and institutional capaci-ties for coping with environmental risks are further complicated by the increasingcomplexity of human-caused environmental risks facing Chinese society (Ding2009; MEP 2009). Greater capacities for developing risk management strategies bygovernment agencies and enterprises are needed. In recognizing the weaknesses ofthe current risk management system, the MEP issued a report entitled ‘Suggestionsfor Strengthening Environmental Emergency Response Management’ (MEP 2009),stressing that environmental risk perception should be the basis for developing andimplementing effective strategies for environmental risk management. The MEPurged the relevant departments at all levels of government to prioritize environmen-tal risk management and to institutionalize and modernize their environmental riskmanagement systems on this basis by 2015.

Besides these institutional factors, public participation and involvement are alsoaffected by public perceptions and understanding of risks. People respond to risksor hazards in ways consistent with their awareness, perceptions, and definitions ofthat risk (Beck and Kropp 2007; De Marchi 2003; Fiorino 1990; McDaniels, Axel-rod, and Slovic 1995; Slimakand and Dietz 2006). While these factors are notlonger considered key to determining individual behavior or action as initially con-ceptualized in attitude-behavior models (de Krom and Mol 2010), awareness andperception do matter (Carbone, Hallstrom, and Smith 2006; Mileti 1993; Sjoberg2000; Slovic 1987; Willis and DeKay 2007). Moreover, public participation in insti-tutionalized risk management will only work when the public becomes aware andto some extent knowledgeable about environmental risks.

Against this background, this study investigates perceptions of environmentalrisks and risk management systems in China. It does so through a survey of

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university students in Beijing, who represent a group with high education level anda generally high sensitivity to new information. Through this survey, we aim tocontribute to better knowledge and understanding of environmental risk perceptionsamong a specific segment of the Chinese public.

Research design

The term ‘environmental risk’ has been used in many studies without being fullydistinguished, differentiated, or defined. In this study, environmental risks refer toanthropogenic environmental changes that, in turn, may adversely affect humans orthe environment on which humans depend. In other words, environmental risks arecharacterized by a causal chain that goes from human activities via environmentalchanges to negative consequences for humans. Humans are both perpetrators andvictims with respect to environmental risks, but perpetrators and victims often donot belong to the same social group (Böhm and Pfister 2000). Environmental riskperception is the subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics andseverity of environmental risks.

Environmental risks and the perceptions of environmental risk are distributedunevenly among different groups in society. The environmental justice literature,studies in the Risk Society tradition (Beck 1992), and numerous other studies onthe role of education, income, and cultural capital in risk perception have shownthis in much detail. Hence, people respond in different ways to accidents, risks, andrisk management. Several theories have been proposed to explain why differentpeople make different estimates of, and act differently upon, environmental risks.These range from psychological approaches, via anthropological and sociologicalapproaches (such as cultural theory and risk society theory) to more interdisciplin-ary approaches. Beck and Kropp (2007) are correct in stating that risk, risk percep-tion, and the social meaning of risk are closely interwoven and need to bediscussed together. However, this study has a much more modest goal: to gain ini-tial knowledge of how much well-educated Chinese know about environmentalrisks and their management and their attitudes towards the existing environmentalrisk management system in China. The social construction of risks and the chal-lenge for the existing institutions concerned with risk regulation and management isleft for future research.

This research aims to investigate how environmental risk and risk managementare perceived by Chinese university students. To this end, two research questionsare developed:

Question 1: How much knowledge do these well-educated Chinese have aboutcurrent environmental accidents and risks, and what are the main sources of thisknowledge?

Question 2: What are the attitudes of Chinese university students towards vari-ous aspects of the current environmental risk management system in China, differ-entiating among the roles of governmental authorities, scientists, the media, andsocial groups?

A survey was carried out through face-to-face interviews. Besides collectinggeneral background data on age, fields of study, hometown, etc. the questionnaireconsisted of three sections. Section 1 asked students to assess the probability ofoccurrence of risks and the actual environmental and health impacts of such risks,

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including natural disasters, climate change, environmental pollution, ecologicaldegradation, loss of biodiversity, epidemics, new technologies, energy resourcedepletion, and food safety. Twenty-five items were randomly ordered and a ratingscale was used to allow the respondents to score (low, medium to high for the prob-ability that the risk would occur, and a five-point scale for the severity of theimpacts). Section 2 focused on respondents’ knowledge of risk management andtheir sources of information. Section 3 focused on the attitudes of students towardsthe current risk management measures being taken by the government, and the rolesof the public, the scientific community, and the media.

The survey was carried out during May and June 2010 at the graduate school ofthe Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), at seven universities and at one collegein Beijing. Given the fact that there existed 60 universities and 22 colleges inBeijing in 2008, this sample represent about 10% of the targeted institutions. Thegraduate school of CAS is considered part of the high education system in China.Two hundred students were randomly sampled from each of these nine academicinstitutions; hence, a total of 1800 respondents, accounting for 0.3% of the totalnumber of college students in Beijing (575, 639 students in 2008) (Beijing Munici-pal Bureau of Statistics and Beijing Economic and Social Survey Corps 2009).Given the high homogeneity of this population, this sample is representative.

This research only investigated the environmental risk knowledge and attitudesof university students in Beijing, based on assumptions that university students arerelatively sensitive to social change compared with other segments of the public,and that these universities select students from across China. The results can begeneralized with prudence to represent overall characteristics of the Chinese univer-sity students. Apart from investigating factors like personal experience with envi-ronmental accidents, membership of environmental organizations, educationalbackground, gender, and age, this research is not meant to compare the differencesbetween groups with different cultural and social backgrounds.

Results and discussions

A total of 1735 valid questionnaires were returned (valid response rate = 96%). Ofthese 1735 respondents, the age of the majority ranged from 18 to 30 years. Thesample had a gender balance: 51% were male and 49% were female. Around 40%studied social sciences, 32% studied natural science disciplines, 21% studied engi-neering, and the rest came from other subjects. A minority of 6% was college stu-dents (three years of higher education), 48% were bachelor students, 40% masterstudents, and 6% were PhD students. Fewer than 18% belonged to environment-related student groups or other environmental organizations.

Perceptions of different environmental risks

To find out which risks students consider most likely to happen and how they ratethe potential effects of these risks if they occur, respondents were asked to judge 25items in terms of probability and impact. As Figure 1 shows, water pollution is con-sidered to be the risk that is by far the most likely to happen (72% selected highrisk), followed by air pollution (69% selected high risk) and noise pollution. Animalepidemic, radiation pollution, and social unrest are ranked as risks most unlikely to

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happen. Potential impacts were considered highest for natural disasters, radiationpollution, and toxic pollutants. Noise pollution, biodiversity reduction, and geneti-cally modified organisms are considered to have the least impacts (see Figure 2).This indicates that water, air, and noise pollution are more common, visible, and

Figure 1. Public awareness of 25 risks, as perceived by respondents (n= 1735).

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immediate to our respondents and more information is available about these typesof risks. Students seem less concerned about the long-term impacts of risks that areeither scientifically uncertain or less visible. This result was in accordance with pub-lic concerns of a number of risks in the UK (Pidgeon, Lorenzoni, and Poortinga2008).

Knowledge on environmental accidents and emergency response

A number of important laws and regulations have been enforced in recent years,and 28% of the respondents had heard of China’s Law of Emergency Response(2007), while 27% had heard of the National Environmental Emergency ResponsePlan (2006). Around 19% of the respondents reported that they were aware of theexistence of the environmental emergency response system in the districts theylived. Since 2000, the number of major environmental accidents has been increasingand these accidents have been widely reported. To get an idea how much attention

Figure 2. Ranking of impacts of 25 risks, as perceived by respondents (n= 1735).

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these university students paid to these reports, six of the most important environ-mental accidents during the past 10 years were selected and the students were askedif they heard of any of these major environmental incidents. The result showed thatover 70% of the respondents knew at least two of these six, but about 7% of therespondents had never heard any of these widely reported incidents (Figure 3). Themost recent accidents were better known.

According to the National Environmental Emergency Response Plan (2006),environmental accidents are classified into four levels considering their severity,which determines reporting procedures and responding measures. The survey showsthat 10% of the respondents knew that environmental accidents are rated at fourlevels.

About 47% of the respondents are aware of the environmental risks in their liv-ing surroundings; again air pollution, water pollution, and noise pollution rankedthe top three. Only 10% of the respondents stated that they have personally experi-enced environmental accidents. Among these accidents, water pollution accidentswere most often mentioned (28%), followed by earthquakes (22%), flooding (14%),sandstorms (10%), chemical accidents (8%), and air pollution accidents (4%).

When asked if they knew where they can turn for help in case of environmentalaccidents, only 17% responded positively, of which 44% chose to report to the pub-lic security bureau (police), 33% chose to report to the environmental protectionbureau, and 11% chose to report to the fire department. However, only 6% of therespondents knew the telephone number (12,369) of the official line for reportingenvironmental emergencies, while the official line for the public security wasknown by 61% of the respondents and that of the fire department by 14%. Thisindicates that using different lines for reporting emergency accidents may causeconfusion and reduce efficiency. In addition, only 16% of the respondents had everreceived organized publicity or training on how to respond to an environmentalemergency. The most mentioned sources of information on environmental risk man-agement and emergency response are the Internet, television, and newspapers.

To conclude, the knowledge of Chinese university students on environmentalrisks, accidents, and existing laws and management systems is very limited. These

Figure 3. Knowledge on Chinese environmental accidents of the past 10 years (3197frequencies from 1725 respondents in 2010).

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results support the conclusions from the most influential national survey on publicenvironmental awareness that has been organized annually by the China Environ-mental Culture Promotion Association (CECPA) since 2005. This survey has beenhailed in local media as the ‘weatherglass of public awareness’ regarding environ-mental protection in China. Each year, it has been used to compile a China PublicEnvironmental Protection index to describe the public environmental awareness,public participation, environmental behavior, and satisfaction with environmentalmanagement performance. The environmental awareness index declined from 57.05in 2006 to 44.05 in 2008 (CECPA 2007–2009).

Attitudes to current environmental risk management

Although governments at all levels should have formulated their local emergencyresponse plans and established risk management system as required by the NationalEnvironmental Emergency Response Plan (2006) and the Law of EmergencyResponse (2007), only 20% of the respondents thought that there was any risk man-agement system in the place they lived. About 10% believed there was no such sys-tem and the large majority (70%) had no idea. This fact indicates that the public isneither aware of nor involved in most of the local risk management systems.Regarding the expected goal of environmental emergency response systems, 73% ofthe respondents thought it was meant for ‘protection of people’s lives and proper-ties,’ and about 14% for ‘protection of the environment.’ About 35% of the respon-dents believed work safety agencies should have the prime responsibility forenvironmental emergency response, while 27% prioritized Environmental Protectionagencies, about 22% put responsibility with enterprises, and 11% opted for PublicSecurity departments and Fire departments. This coincides with the fact that envi-ronmental accidents are often cause or consequence of other types of accidents,requiring joint efforts of various relevant departments and the enterprises in preven-tion and response.

Figures 4(a) and 4(b) show that the respondents highlight the importance ofpublic participation as well as science and technology in risk management. When

Figure 4a. Importance of public participation in environmental risk management, asperceived by respondents (n= 1667).

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asked about preferences in environmental risk management strategies andapproaches, 43% of the respondents preferred bottom-up approaches in whichcitizens and social groups are informed and involved, while 35% preferred morecentralized management approaches in which relevant governmental departmentsare coordinated by a higher level governmental authority.

Environmental agencies and research institutes or universities were consideredthe most reliable organizations for providing information in cases of environmentalaccidents (Figure 5. About 50% of the respondents mentioned that the media playan important role in raising public environmental risk awareness, attracting attentionof governmental authorities and international organizations, influencing public opin-ion, and putting pressure on polluters. Only 15% of the respondents mentioned thatthe media could also cause confusion and conflicts by focusing on one side of thestory.

Prevention and preparedness should be the priority of any environmental riskmanagement system at this moment, according to the majority of the respondents.However, about 50% of the respondents did not think local authorities actuallyattach sufficient importance to risk prevention. Table 1 shows the measures sug-gested by the respondents to further prevent environmental accidents.

When asked which two environmental issues should be prioritized in currentenvironmental risk management, 74% chose water pollution and 65% chose airpollution, compared with only 12% mentioning radiation pollution from nuclear

Figure 4b. Importance of science and technology in environmental risk management, asperceived by respondents (n= 1667).

Table 1. Preventive measures suggested by the respondents (more than one answerpossible) (n= 1663).

Preventive measures Frequency Percent (%)

Improve the prediction capacity 979 56.4Enact the emergency response plan 1123 64.7Implement EIA and SEA 719 41.4Increase the financial support 300 17.3Conduct the publicity and education 863 49.7Evaluate and improve the environmental risk management system 526 30.3Develop the effective approach 445 25.6

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installations. Only 29% and 35% of the respondents, respectively, were convincedthat current water and air pollution problems were properly managed, compared to44% who thought radiation risk was well supervised. Figure 6 shows the gapsbetween public perceptions of actual risk management and desired priorities in riskmanagement by the public.

Only 1.2% of the respondents considered it environmental risk management byenvironmental protection agencies ‘very effective,’ 13% believed it to be ‘effective,’and about 64% were ‘neutral’. Only about 7% of the respondents were very satis-fied or satisfied with the information provided by governmental agencies in case ofenvironmental accidents, while 54% were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied (Figure 7).This clearly indicates a lack of credibility of governmental information provisioningto the public.

The three main weaknesses of the current environmental risk management sys-tem are considered to be low efficiency of the management (51% of the respon-dents); unspecified rights and responsibilities (49%); and low environmental riskawareness of the public and the enterprises (44%). In terms of the need for futurecapacity building of environmental agencies, the respondents prioritized the estab-lishment of an environmental risk information platform; the formation of more par-ticipatory environmental risk governance; and the strengthening of supervision andenforcement of laws and regulations.

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

Environmental Institutes & Governmentagency universities

NGOs Internationalorganizations

Supervisionagency

Other Enterprises

Perc

ent(

%)

Figure 5. Most reliable sources of information on environmental accidents, as perceived byrespondents (n = 1694).

0

20

40

60

80

Waterpollution

Air pollution Wastepollution

Toxicpollutant

Noisepollution

Nuclearpower

pollution

Perc

ent (

%)

Priority Effective management

Figure 6. Priorities in environmental risk management and the perceived effectivemanagement and supervision on six environmental issues (n= 1657).

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To conclude, these results support findings from other relevant studies and sur-veys (CECPA 2006; He, Lu et al. 2011; Mol et al. 2011; Zhang, Mol et al. 2010;Zhang and Zhong 2010) regarding public access to environmental information, trustin information from different sources, gaps between individual environmentalawareness and actual environmental actions, and gaps between limited environmen-tal management capacity of governmental agencies and the strong dependence ofthe public on the government for environmental protection. For instance, the CEC-PA survey (2006) showed that over 70% of the respondents believed environmentalprotection was more important than economic development and about 87% felt theurgency of environmental protection. However, among 20 listed environmentalactions, fewer than 30% of the respondents adopted half of these actions. In addi-tion, over 70% of the respondents believed that environmental protection is theresponsibility of governmental agencies, but only 39% of them were satisfied withthe performance of these agencies. In the group of young people (18–25 years old)and students even less were satisfied with governmental performance: 32 and 23%,respectively.

Factors influencing attitudes to environmental risk management

Risk perceptions can be influenced by various factors, including age, education,profession, study background, risk experiences of the respondents, and economicand institutional factors (e.g. Rohrmann and Chen 1999; Slovic 1987; Willis andDeKay 2007). The factors which influence public knowledge and perceptions ofenvironmental risk management in general are complex in nature and not fullyunderstood.

Spearman correlation analysis showed that there were statistically significantpositive correlations between education levels and the knowledge of the ChinaEmergency Response Law (p< 0.001); between the studied subject/discipline andknowledge of the China Emergency Response Law (p< 0.01); between membershipof environmental social groups and knowledge of the law and regulations(p< 0.001); between personal experiences with environmental accidents and

Neutral38.6%

Very satisfied1.2%

Very unsatisfied14.3%

Satisfied5.5%

Unsatisfied40.3%

Figure 7. Satisfaction with official governmental information on environmental emergencyaccidents (n= 1694).

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awareness of the environmental risks in the surrounding (p< 0.001); and betweenexperience with training with risks/emergency response and satisfaction with theaccessibility to environmental risk information (p< 0.001).

Conclusions

The current environmental risk management system in China is an expedientresponse to the increasing risks and incidents in recent years. The system follows aconventional top-down approach and does not take into account public awarenessand attitudes on environmental risks and risk management. Little effort has beenmade to understand how the public perceive environmental risk management.

The results of this survey confirm that university students generally have limitedknowledge about and little experience with environmental risks, accidentsresponses, and the existing environmental risk management system. This is not sur-prising considering the fact that the CECPA public environmental protection indexremained at a low level from 2005 (68.05) to 2010 (69.5). Compared with othergeneral environmental issues, environmental risk management is a less well-knownissue for the university students. This fact has explained the students’ confusionabout what should be done in case of emergency.

Similar to the conclusions of the CECPA results, the general attitude of the uni-versity students towards governmental approaches to environmental risk manage-ment is rather negative. Distrust in the credibility of official information onenvironmental risks and accidents seems to be a large barrier for forming effectiveand participatory environmental risk governance. Following the call of the SixthPlenary Session of the 17th Communist Party Congress that was closed on 18 Octo-ber 2011, premier Wen Jiabao chaired the State Council Executive Meeting on 19October to deploy the formulation of Social Credibility. He pointed out that prob-lems in the credibility of society and public trust in the government are hinderingthe progress of the Chinese society, which ‘the Chinese people can no longer toler-ate’ (Xinhua News Agency 2011). Song Xinfang, a NPC deputy who proposedbuilding a credibility system for the country’s companies and society, repeated that:‘The people’s loss of trust in the government could bring the greatest harm.’ Thesequotes show that top Chinese leaders have reiterated the significance of credibilityfor both the government and society, as a response to governmental failure to copewith increasing frauds and crises in many sectors, which have made Chinese citi-zens suspicious of virtually everything (Ouyang 2011; People’s Daily 2011). Thereestablishment of public trust in environmental risk management cannot beachieved without the improvement of the general trust in government.

Important factors that affected university students’ risk perception and attitudestowards environmental risk management: personal risk experiences, membership ofenvironmental organizations, subject of study, education level, and training. Thismeans that risk perceptions and attitudes increase when environmental education,including on emergency responses, is integrated into the education programs of differ-ent disciplines and more tailor-made publicity activities are organized for universitystudents.

Considering the large gap between the rural and urban populations regardingenvironmental perception (see CECPA 2006), the results of this study should not begeneralized. To a certain extent, this survey contributed to the knowledge pool on(perceptions and attitudes of) environmental risk management in China and helped

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to identify problems and needs for future capacity building. More studies areneeded to understand how and why different social groups perceive environmentalrisks and risk management differently and what implications this has for risk man-agement and policy-making.

AcknowledgementsThis study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71103175), International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China(2012DFA91150), the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the ChineseAcademy of Sciences (11CDP028). Thanks to the reviewers for their comments. Specialthanks go to Dr Mark Henderson for his detailed editorial suggestions.

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