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Who should be blamed? The attribution of responsibility for a city smog event in China

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Abstract

The frequently occurring city smog in China has become a hot topic and raised extensive discussion in the public health domain. Our study tries to explore how citizens attribute causation and responded to city smog in Hefei, Anhui Province. The data from 420 respondents generally answered our research questions. The result suggests that attribution of responsibility can be influenced by risk perception, citizens’ occupation and source reliance. Attribution of responsibility, source reliance and risk perception can affect the citizens’ protective actions.

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Fig. 1

Source: Chinese air quality index online analysis (http://www.aqistudy.cn/)

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0802502) to the first and second author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Peng Cheng & Jiuchang Wei

  2. Center for Crisis Management Research, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Jiuchang Wei

  3. Department of Emergency Management, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, 58102, USA

    Yue Ge

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  1. Peng Cheng
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  2. Jiuchang Wei
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  3. Yue Ge
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Correspondence to Jiuchang Wei.

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Center for Crisis Management Research was sponsored by Beijing Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science.

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Cheng, P., Wei, J. & Ge, Y. Who should be blamed? The attribution of responsibility for a city smog event in China. Nat Hazards 85, 669–689 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2597-1

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