Local "Heaven" in a "Hell" of a World: Ecological Risk Perception in Its Context. J. M. Palma-Oliveira, University of Lisbon, Portugal; I. Druzhinina, Institute of Risk Research, Austria; and D. Antunes, Independente University, Portugal
In the last decade some research, including our own, has been very clear in stressing a high perception of environmental risk (Palma-Oliveira, 2001). If a high-risk perception is maintained for long, could be a source of environmental stress. Thus, one could hypothesize that a kind of psychological adaptation should be found in order to furnish a balanced (and more positive) view of the specific environment where one lives. We will present the results of a series of studies where we compared the global ecological and industrial with the local and regional risk perceptions. In those studies, undertaken with different types of subjects and across Europe, we compared the risk perception that people have about the contamination of the national soil, air, water, etc. with their regional risk perception. Despite the contextual difference amongst the studies a highly consistent pattern of results emerged. The results pointed to a high level of risk perception of the global ecological themes when applied to the countries. However, when people where asked to evaluate their own specific region, they showed a much more positive view of their environment. This result is always present independently of the "true" environmental quality of their specific region. Even when, in what concerns the estimation of the radioactive contamination due to the Chernobyl disaster, people acknowledged the global contamination of their country (i.e., Russia or Ukraine) they tend to evaluate their own region has having a much lower level of contamination. It appears that people across the world always see their own place in a special light. "Our" place is not as destroyed as the global country, region or continent. Despite the fact that one could consider some places as having better qualities than their own, this particular "place" is always better evaluated than the psychological average of "places", given by the overall "country" evaluation.
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