Abstract
The intensity, frequency, and duration of heat waves are expected to increase with climate change. In this study, we found a significant difference of public perceived effects of heat waves and trust in government among urban, suburban, and rural districts. Rural residents had a significant higher effect perception than urbanites and also showed stronger willingness to have medical insurance or regular physical examinations. Meanwhile, suburban residents had the lowest trust perception in government among these three districts, which may be due to suburban districts’ unique social structure and complex social issues. Besides, we assessed the relationship between the factor effect and demographic variables. The results showed that urban respondents’ effect perception was significantly related to heat wave experiences. Suburban respondents’ effect perception was significantly related to age, income, and heat wave experiences. And rural respondents’ effect perception was significantly related to income and chronic diseases. Based on our results, much more attention needs to be paid to rural districts. The government should strengthen infrastructure construction such as cooling centers, improve emergency response plans and mechanisms, and increase reserves of emergency supplies in rural districts. Also, targeted risk communication is of the equal importance to aid the policy-makers improving the relationship with the public and regaining the public’s trust and support.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Weiliang Bao, Xuwen Chen, Lilin Lin, and Haiyun Wu for questionnaire distribution and fruitful discussions. And we thank for the support of the Chinese Natural Science Foundation 41571475 (http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/, received by LH) and the Special Funding for Environmental Public Welfare Projects 201509053 (http://www.zhb.gov.cn/, received by LH).The work of Y. Liu waspartially supported by the Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives andthe Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory led by Dr.Philip Wainwright through the Emory-NJU Global Partnership Initiative.
Funding
This study was funded by the Chinese Natural Science Foundation 41571475. (http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/, received by LH) and the Special Funding for Environmental Public Welfare Projects 201509053 (http://www.zhb.gov.cn/, received by LH). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This study was also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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Huang, L., Yang, Q., Li, J. et al. Risk perception of heat waves and its spatial variation in Nanjing, China. Int J Biometeorol 62, 783–794 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-017-1480-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-017-1480-4