Technological Disasters in Natural and Built Environments

Although research has examined differences in people’s responses to natural versus technologically caused disasters, research has not examined the differences in people’s attitudes toward disasters in natural versus built environments. This study examined the effects of the type of environment and awareness of the problem on attitudes toward the cleanup of oil spills. The results showed that the type of environment did not affect ratings of the importance of the environmental problem or how it should be cleaned up. However, people were more concerned about the environmental and community impacts of the cleanup process in the built environment. Awareness of the problem was a more important factor than type of environment for understanding attitudes toward the oil spill cleanup. People who were more aware of the oil spills viewed the problems as more important and were more concerned that the environments be returned to their previous states.