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Citizens' Perceptions (citizen + perception)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Relocated Citizens' Perceptions and Attitudes Regarding Indoor Application of Toxic Agricultural Pesticides

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2000
Olurominiyi O. Ibitayo
This study investigates the viewpoints of relocated citizens regarding the effects of relocation, perceptions of the potential hazards of indoor application of a toxic agricultural pesticide , methyl parathion , and the efficacy of the risk information emphasizing the adverse health effects of this inappropriate use of the pesticide. The surveyed citizens were those relocated because the levels of the pesticide contaminant in their homes were high. Despite the extensive information , through the mass media and face-to-face warnings and activities such as assessment of contamination levels, decontamination of homes and relocation , the respondents, regardless of race, consistently perceived relatively low levels of risks from the indoor application of methyl parathion. The disruption of family life, loss of peace of mind and the loss of contaminated property were the most mentioned problems caused by the relocation. In contrast to past research, the disruption of social ties or networks was hardly mentioned. The results of this study suggest that the perceived personal benefits of home-use of methyl parathion, and the voluntariness and controllability of exposure may have been the overriding factors of the respondents' risk perception, more than the clarity, content, consistency, and credibility of the risk information. The fact that the relocation was temporary must have contributed to the low level of importance attached by the respondents to the disruption of social ties as one of the adverse effects of the relocation. [source]

Citizens' Perceptions of Ideological Bias in Research on Public Policy Controversies

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Robert J. MacCoun
How do ordinary citizens react to new policy-relevant findings that they learn about from media mentions or word of mouth? We conducted an experiment embedded in a random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone survey of 1,050 California adults. Respondents heard a description of a hypothetical study on one of four politicized topics or a politically neutral topic (nutrition) and were asked to describe their reactions to the study's main finding. As in prior research, citizens were more skeptical when the findings contradicted their prior beliefs about the topic. But, we also found effects of partisanship and ideology even after controlling for specific issue attitudes. Citizens, especially those holding conservative beliefs, tended to attribute studies with liberal findings to the liberalism of the researcher, but citizens were less likely to attribute conservative findings to the conservatism of the researcher. [source]

An Environmental Origin of Antinuclear Activism in Japan, 1954,1963: The Government, the Grassroots Movement, and the Politics of Risk

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2008
Toshihiro Higuchi
This paper challenges the centrality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our understanding of Japan's antinuclear activism. Focusing on the social distribution and perception of the fallout d*anger, I reexamine the symbiotic dynamics of governmental diplomacy and the grassroots movement against nuclear tests from 1954 to 1963. I argue that radioactive pollution during the Bikini incident triggered a consumerist and materialist turn in the peace movement with housewives at the center. Initially resisting the citizens' perception of risk, the conservative administration by 1957 came to embrace it and launched diplomacy against nuclear tests to steal people's support away from the grassroots movement. At this crucial moment, the grassroots movement's leadership switched its focus from fallout to the "war policy" in the West, which brought about a paradigm shift from the consumerist and materialist platform toward militant workerism for socialist peace. Now disparaging fallout as merely a "physical phenomenon," the campaign leaders left the environmental angle exposed in 1961 when the Soviet Union unilaterally broke a test moratorium in effect since 1958. While the government's diplomacy, shrewdly stressing the fallout danger, applied a blow to the campaign, the group was split and paralyzed over a protest of Soviet fallout until it dissolved in 1963. The Japanese experience ultimately proved to be an abortive attempt to grasp the environmental legacy of the Bikini incident. [source]

EVALUATING EU POLICIES ON PUBLIC SERVICES: A CITIZENS' PERSPECTIVE

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Judith Clifton
ABSTRACT,:,This article evaluates EU policies on public services , particularly public network services , from the citizens' point of view. It is first argued that citizens' perceptions are important because the provision of fundamental services is at stake and because they constitute the infrastructure necessary for social and economic development. Citizens',voice' can, therefore, be known, analyzed and used in the design of improved policy on public services along with other indicators. Changing EU policy on public services is synthesized and classified into two main phases in section two. Citizen satisfaction with public services as revealed through surveys from 1997 to 2007 is explored in the third section. In the discussion, the prospects for EU policy on public services are considered and, it is argued that, from the perspectives of subsidiarity and proportionality, policy towards strengthening the common market is being increasingly uploaded to the supranational level in the form of directives, whilst cohesion and redistribution policies are being downloaded to the national level or dealt with at the supranational level by ,soft' instruments. [source]