Misrecognition or heightened awareness? The role of local context in perceptions of environmental inequality across social groups

Abstract Public perceptions of environmental harm distributions reflect public consciousness about social inequalities and can influence social movements and policy. Yet existing scholarship suggests the question: Do groups disproportionately exposed to harms experience heightened awareness of environmental inequality, or do they misrecognize their levels of exposure compared to other groups, due, for example, to local narratives that attenuate perceptions of social inequality? Through a representative multimodal survey of Salt Lake County, Utah, residents (n = 540), we seek to answer this question by investigating: 1) the extent to which individuals recognize environmental inequality; 2) which sociodemographic groups are more likely to recognize it; and 3) how local context relates to this recognition. We find that just over half of respondents acknowledged disproportionate exposure to air pollution in the Westside of Salt Lake County, an EJ community, but fewer recognized disparities based on race or income. Women were more likely to recognize inequality than men, but neither race, income, nor Westsider identity were associated with heightened awareness of environmental inequality. This reveals a gap between public opinion and independently measured exposure disparities. Findings support the view that groups disproportionately exposed to environmental harms are not predisposed to recognize environmental inequalities.