Threat Perception, Issue Knowledge, and Citizen Coproduction Preferences

• In Event: Renovating Democracy through Addressing Environmental Justice

Abstract

Local communities in the United States often face various health threats from environmental hazards and pollutions. To address these problems, it is important for citizens to actively participate in the processes to co-produce environmental health policies and programs with government. While a growing body of literature in political science and public administration has examined different types of citizen coproduction activities and provided various explanations for citizen decisions to coproduce public goods and services with government, few studies have explored the links from threat perception and issue knowledge to citizen coproduction preferences.

Drawing on past literature and focusing on the issue area of public environmental health, we theoretically and empirically investigate how citizens’ perceived environmental health threats and their issue-specific knowledge influence their preferences to participate in coproduction activities with government. Using original data from our 2021 US nationally representative Public Opinion Survey on Environmental Health Risk Perceptions and Policy Preferences (N=1,207), we expect that our regression analyses with various model specifications will show that people with higher risk perception and with more issue knowledge about environmental health are more likely to express stronger willingness to engage in coproduction activities with government.

Our study contributes to the fast-growing citizen coproduction scholarship in political science and public administration; it also bears important policy implications for local environmental health management and governance.

Author

• Xinsheng Liu, Texas A&M University