Perceptions of risk to water environments in the lower Fraser basin, British Columbia

• Main Author: Cavanagh, Nigel Steven
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Risk perception > British Columbia.; Environmental risk assessment > British Columbia.; Water resources development > Decision making.; Risk assessment.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8899

The following thesis presents the results of a two year study that addressed lay perceptions of the risks to the water resources of the Lower Fraser Basin, British Columbia. Studies of this nature are important because by clarifying public perceptions, risk communication policies as well as land and water resource use plans that accommodate people's concerns can be developed appropriately. The study was based on a written survey that was administered to 183 lay subjects in four communities within the Lower Fraser Basin. Sixteen experts participated in a portion of the survey. Analysis involved the determination of how people perceive distinct human activities in terms of the risk each may pose to the health of aquatic ecosystems. Further analysis compared these perceptions to those of specialists in the aquatic sciences. The thesis is structured as a collection of three papers that examine different aspects of the study. The First paper provides a review of the overall data set, while the remaining two papers address related subsets of the data. One paper reviews perceptions of activities that cause eutrophication problems and the other reviews perceptions of forest industry activities. The results demonstrated that people tend to view risks to water environments in a multi-faceted fashion. Four factors were found to influence people's general perception of risk and the need for regulation of the activities that were perceived to pose the risk. These factors were termed Ecological Impact, Human Benefit, Controllability and Knowledge. Another significant result was the fact that there were often striking differences between the views of the lay sample and those of the expert sample. Some activities were perceived by the lay sample as posing substantial risk while the experts did not view this to be the case. Alternatively, for some activities, the reverse scenario occurred. Accordingly, there were differences in judgements between the two groups as to the degree of regulation that should be imposed on the respective activities.