Public risk salience of sea level rise in Louisiana, United States
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Public risk salience of sea level rise in Louisiana, United States Zeynep Altinay 1
&
Eric Rittmeyer 2 & Lauren L. Morris 3 & Margaret A. Reams 4
Accepted: 27 October 2020 # AESS 2020
Abstract Understanding public perceptions of sea level rise (SLR) is essential for effective risk communication in coastal areas. Using cross-sectional data from a representative survey of 1042 Louisiana residents, we measured the role of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, education, income, race, and political affiliation), contextual factors (distance to coast, geographic vulnerability, perceived extreme weather, home ownership, and presence of children in the household), media measures (local television, local newspaper, and satisfaction with media coverage), and perceived causes of coastal land loss (natural erosion from waves, hurricane activity, oil and gas industry activity, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers activity) on SLR risk salience. Ordinal logistic analysis showed perceived extreme weather and geographic vulnerability to be strong and positive predictors of SLR risk salience. Implications for risk communication are discussed. Keywords Natural hazard . Environmental perceptions . Media exposure . Risk communication . Coastal land loss
Introduction Wetlands are important for deltaic communities because they provide many economic and ecological services. They provide a productive ecosystem for its residents by improving water quality, supporting the nation’s billion-dollar seafood and energy industries, and acting as a buffer from storm surges and sea level rise (SLR) (Costanza et al. 1998; Boutwell and Westra 2015). Wetlands in urbanized and urbanizing areas, * Zeynep Altinay [email protected] Eric Rittmeyer [email protected] Lauren L. Morris [email protected] Margaret A. Reams [email protected] 1
Media and Strategic Communication Department, Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, USA
2
Department of Biology, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA
3
Independent Researcher, New Jersey, NJ, USA
4
Department of Environmental Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
however, face many stressors through construction of dams and levees, agricultural activities, extraction of oil and gas, and activities related to shipping and navigation (Mazzotta et al. 2019). As a result, high rates of subsidence combined with rising sea levels lead to large amounts of land disappearing into open water (Oliver-Cabrera and Wdowinski 2016). SLR poses great risks for low-lying areas through shoreline erosion, flooding, and storms, among other factors (Lindsey 2018). Up to 70% of the population of the southeastern US may be influenced by rising sea levels, which would put thousands of households at risk (Hauer et al. 2016). Risk communication of environmental concerns has been increasingly challenged in the twenty-first century by secondgeneration environmental issues, such as SLR, which are difficult to precisely observe, locate, predict, and solve (Vandenbergh 2001). Most recent environm
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