Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
Communication
Non Technical Summary
Hispanics (or Latinos) report higher levels than Whites on beliefs about the role of humans in global warming (70% vs 44%) (Krogstad, 2015). At the same time, Hispanics are becoming more relevant to environmental decision-making within political arenas, including but not limited to issues related to natural resource management, energy production, and food production. At the same time, Hispanics are disproportionately affected by many environmental problems. One in every two U.S. Hispanics lives in the country's top-25 most ozone-polluted cities (Quintero, Jaffee, Madrid, Ramierz and Delgado, 2011). The impacts of climate change also disproportionately affect Hispanic and other minority communities because most live in states that are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change (e.g. sea level rise, droughts, floods) such as California, Florida, New York and Texas (Martinich, Neumann, Ludwig, and Jantarasami, 2013; Wilson, Richard, Joseph, and Williams, 2010). Health scholars talk about the Hispanic paradox: Hispanics have similar or better health outcomes compared to Whites, despite having lower average income and education (Ruiz, Steffen, and Smith, 2013). Something similar could be said of environmental risk perception, where Hispanics are more concerned about environmental problems than Whites, despite the wide socioeconomic gap. Two scholarly problems arise from these realities. First is a conceptual problem. The label "Hispanic" is a catch-all term that disregards any difference among the population. Second, only very limited research in environmental communication has explored environmental risk perceptions among Hispanics specifically, not just as a category in a single ethnicity/race question in a questionnaire. My project will address these problems: I will explore social and individual level factors that influence environmental risk perceptions and associated preventive behaviors among a highly diverse Hispanic population in the United States. I will also explore the role of news media information in the formation of such perceptions and decision-making. Understanding the drivers of environmental concern and decision-making among Hispanics is particularly important to organizations seeking to influence environmental behavior changes, public engagement and political participation among minority populations. In addition, it is relevant to producers of environmental information, such as new media organizations. One of the most challenging parts of studying environmental perceptions and decision-making among a specific ethnic and cultural group is the vague boundaries that determine who is and is not a part of the group, or what the label means for that matter. Researchers must consider various factors, such as nationality, language, migratory status and place of residence to establish the extent of the Hispanicness (Valencia, 1985) of an individual or community. My long-term goal is to find better ways to analyze the role of culture in the context of environmental risk perceptions, decision-making and communication. I will develop a theoretically-based approach to improve the quantity and quality of environmental and science communication among Hispanic populations in the United States. The proposed research falls under two specific knowledge areas outlined by AgBioResearch and USDA. The project will continue my work examining perceptions of environmental issues among minority groups (KA803 Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families and Communities), particular Hispanics in the US, and how communication about those issues affect such perceptions (KA903 Communication, Education, and Information Delivery). The proposed research program will apply social scientific theories to examine journalistic practices related to the coverage of environmental topics that are of particular interest to AgBioResearch, such as climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, and natural hazards; and the ways in which such information is influencing Hispanics' environmental perceptions.
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
80%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this projectis to find better ways to analyze the role of culture in the context of environmental risk perceptions, decision-making and communication. This goal will allow the PD to help communicators and news media producers understand the gaps and information needs of Hispanics in the United States when it comes to environmental and science information. To do so, the project willtest the relationship between acculturation and environmental perceptions and decision-making anddetermine the ways in which environmental news among Spanish-language news organizations is produced.There are three main questions guiding this analysis: how do individuals in thesub-groups of Hispanics perceive environmental risks posed to them, their families, and their communities; how are these perceptions formed; and what role do cultural factors and information sources play in the formation of such perceptions? Answering these questions will dramatically improve our ability to develop culturally sensitive information that is relevant to these segments of the population.In addition,I will examine the coverage of environmental news in Spanish-language media. It is important to determine what this coverage is, and whether it varies depending on things such as size and type of media, media market served, audiences or the beliefs about the environment or science of the journalists and media organizations.
Project Methods
First, I will examine media habits of Hispanics and individual and social level factors related to interest in environmental and science issues, and information-seeking and processing processes, both mediated and non-mediated. For this I will conduct focus groups in areas of high Hispanic population density and a biannual national representative survey. Second, I will conduct a content analysis of Spanish-language media in regards to environmental issues.Focus groupsI will conduct focus groups with Hispanics in regions with high concentrations of Hispanics. The lack of previous research on the topic requires an exploratory qualitative approach to identify the main factors at play that can later be analyzed through other methodologies. I plan to concentrate in areas such as South Florida (Miami-Dade area), where a high concentration of Cubans reside; California (Los Angeles), with a large Mexican population; the border between El Paso and Ciudad de Juarez in Mexico, which is a unique place to study the melding of cultures; New York (New York City), which includes large populations of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans; or Michigan (Grand Rapids area) which has a growing population of Hispanics and a long history of seasonal agricultural workers. The geographic distribution will also allow me to examine place-based differences among Hispanics.The data analysis will allow me to examine how Hispanic characterize themselves and their communities, as well as their views on the labels Hispanics and Latinos, how they have acculturated to the dominant U.S. culture and how they communicate and consume information about environmental affairs. A second goal of the focus groups is to extract main themes and concepts to examine and test at a larger scale. Although I expect that environmental risk perceptions and behaviors will be influenced by factors previously examined in the literature (e.g. attitudes, trust, self-efficacy, values, etc.), I also assume that new themes might emerge. This study will generate hypotheses and research questions for a potential survey analysis and provide empirical grounding for the development of theoretical models.SurveyI will conduct, dependent on securing funding, a nationally representative survey of the Hispanic population in the United States to measure their media habits related to the environment. A series of questions will measure various variables and relationships uncovered in the focus groups. The sampling design will follow a stratified and clustering method to collect representative data from specific geographic regions, nationalities and generations. Due to the large proportion of Mexicans in the country within the Hispanic population, I will include a comparable number of non-Mexicans to test the hypothesis that nationality plays a role in environmental risk perceptions. The sample will be collected by Qualtrics, which will also administer the survey. I will seek additional funding to continue to administer the survey beyond the timeframe of this proposal.I plan to measure the of acculturation of individuals by using the brief acculturation scale for Hispanics (Mills, Malcarne, Fox, and Sadler, 2014). This scale will allow me to determine generational differences, cultural variation and language preferences as potential predictors of media habits and beliefs and attitudes about the environment. Subsequently a revised scale will be tested vis-à-vis the Hispanic acculturation scale. Other concepts I plan to measure but that will depend on the results of the focus groups include media sources, trust towards the news media (both Spanish- and English-language), science knowledge, environmental attitudes and values, social norms and demographics (education, income, place of residence, political ideology). These are all variables included in theories of risk perceptions and environmental behaviors (e.g., psychometric paradigm, theory of planned behavior). Statistical analyses for between-subjects comparison (ANOVA) and regression analyses will test the assumptions that cultural nuances (e.g., acculturation), regionalism and nationalism also play a role in the relationship between media use and environmental concern and interest in environmental and science issues.Content analysisI will analyze Spanish-language media in the U.S. Spanish-language media will be identified from the focus groups and other sources scholarly and industry sources. The inclusion or exclusion of media will depend on the number of outlets, but the goal is to include a range of traditional media (newspapers, television, and radio). Similarly, the time-range of study will depend on the availability of data.This quantitative analysis will be one of the first to exhaustively examine environmental content in the Spanish-language media system. The content analysis will code for variables typically used in media research to assess content. This includes type of publication, market served, circulation or ratings, themes (climate change, air pollution, energy, etc.), frames (policy, Pandora's Box runaway science, etc.) and sources (scientists, government officials, citizens, industry representatives, etc.).InterviewsI will conduct in-depth interviews with Spanish-language media producers, editors and reporters. These individuals will be selected from those media mentioned by focus group participants, with a particular focus on local news organizations. The interviews will follow a similar script as the one in my previous study with Spanish-language media producers (Takahashi, Pinto, Vigón, and Chavez, 2015), including questions about journalistic norms and roles, perceptions of audiences, organizational challenges and perceptions of environmental issues. In addition, because ethnic news organizations focus mostly on local issues, I will ask interviewees about their personal involvement with the communities they serve and live in.