Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-17-2020

Department

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science; Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences

Abstract

Judgments about acceptable risk in the context of policy may be influenced by law makers, policy makers, experts and the general public. While significant effort has been made to understand public attitudes on acceptable risk of environmental pollution, little is known about such attitudes in the context of species' endangerment. We present survey results on these attitudes in the context of United States' legal-political apparatus intended to mitigate species endangerment. The results suggest that the general public exhibit lower tolerance for risk than policy makers and experts. Results also suggest that attitudes about acceptable risk for species endangerment are importantly influenced by one's knowledge about the environment and social identity. That result is consistent with notions that risk judgments are a synthesis of facts and values and that knowledge is associated with one's social identity. We explain the implications of these findings for understanding species endangerment across the planet.

Publisher's Statement

Article deposited here in compliance with publisher policies. Publisher's version of record: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab5cc8

Publication Title

Environmental Research Letters

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Version

Publisher's PDF

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