Attitudes and perceptions about ecological resources and hazards of peopleliving around the Savannah River Site

Although considerable attention is devoted to environmental monitoring and assessment with respect to both pollutants and the status of particular pla nt or animal populations, less attention is devoted to assessing people's a ttitudes about the relative importance of ecological resources. In this pap er we examine the attitudes and perceptions about ecological resources of p eople living around the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), i n South Carolina. Our overall hypothesis is that people who are directly af fected by the possible outcomes and consequences of a particular hazard (i. e., those people employed at SRS) will undervalue the risks and overvalue t he potential benefits from future land uses that favor continued site activ ity, compared to people who live near but are not employed at SRS. We inter viewed 286 people attending the Aiken Trials horse show on 14 March 1997. T here were few gender differences, although men hunted and fished more than women, women ranked three environmental concerns as more severe than did me n, and women were more concerned about the effect of SRS on property values . Maintenance of SRS as a National Environmental Research Park ranked first as a future land use; nuclear production ranked second, followed by huntin g and hiking. Only residential development ranked very low as a future land use. There were many differences as a function of employment history at SR S: 1) people who work at SRS think that the federal government should spend funds to clean up all nuclear facilities, and they think less money should be spent on other environmental problems than did non-employees, 2) people who work at SRS ranked continued current uses of SRS higher than did peopl e who never worked at SRS, and 3) people who work at SRS are less concerned about the storage of nuclear material or accidents at the site than are pe ople who never worked at the site.