关键词: 风险认知, 城市大气污染, 人口统计学变量, 社会经济因素, 地点效应

Abstract: The authors give a fairly thorough review on papers published in the recent twenty years related to public risk perception on urban air pollution. It summarized major factors affecting the public’s risk perception, including the characteristics of risk itself, peripheral environmental conditions, exposure routes, socio-demographic factors, and other individual characteristics. Specifically, the public’s perceived risk towards air pollution is weakly correlated with scientific air quality data released officially and in media. Instead, it is affected by their proximity to pollution sources, vegetation coverage, physical experiences, health status and anecdotes. Females, those with respiratory diseases, and those more educated are concerned more about air pollution and perceived a higher risk. Socioeconomic factors also affect the public’s perceived level of risks. Besides, this paper summarizes the quantitative and qualitative methods used to study perceived risk towards air pollution. Finally, future research directions are identified including how the public perceive the causal link between air pollution and health effects, effect of media and trust, and effect of risk perception on behavior.

Key words: risk perception, urban air pollution, demographic factors, socioeconomic factors, location effect