The Influencing Factors of Haze Tolerance in China

Haze pollution has become the most serious environmental risk in China and generated a large amount of public concerns. Influencing almost all the citizens in the polluted area, it is necessary and important to take public perception as an essential element in haze abatement. From the perspective of social psychology, this paper explores haze tolerance in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, also the key influential factors on haze tolerance from four dimensions: political trust, perceived risk, cost perception, and haze knowledge. Based on the sample of 517 respondents, the results show that compared with Shanghai and Guangzhou, Beijing residents had the lowest tolerance level of haze pollution but have the highest levels of trust in the government’s capacity to control haze and self-evaluation of their own haze knowledge. People in Shanghai had the lowest cost perception and the strongest willingness to acquire haze knowledge. Meanwhile, the empirical analysis revealed that political trust and cost perception could enhance the public’s haze tolerance while perceived risk and haze knowledge had negative impacts on tolerance. Also, our research could provide some suggestions to government officials when making policies for abating haze pollution from the perspective of social risk control. Policy makers are supposed to launch various policy instruments to control haze effectively and engage the citizens in the decision-making process to improve their political trust, and publicize the knowledge of haze pollution to help the public to acquire objective and scientific knowledge and diminish unnecessary worries.