8 billion and counting: a cross-cultural assessment of the perceived risk of global population growth

Dawson, Ian and Zhang, Danni (2024) 8 billion and counting: a cross-cultural assessment of the perceived risk of global population growth. Society for Risk Analysis - Europe - Conference 2024: Risk in Time and Space, Harokopio University of Athens, Athens, Greece. 02 - 05 Jun 2024.

Abstract

The global human population reached 8 billion on 15th November 2022, and is projected to reach 10 billion by 2058. Evidence suggests that global population growth (GPG) increases the probability of many adverse outcomes, including climate change, species extinctions, resource shortages, zoonosis, habitat destruction, and violent conflicts. A small number of studies have found that the public are concerned about the effects of GPG, and these concerns are positively related to their willingness to engage in mitigative and preventative actions. However, research on the factors that influence GPG risk perceptions is limited. To help address this knowledge gap, at the end of November 2022, we conducted a study of the perceived risk of GPG among UK and US residents (N = 1,029).

Our results confirm that GPG is perceived as a substantial risk and these perceptions have a strong positive relationship with the willingness to engage in and support risk management actions. Our participants’ affective reactions to GPG were primarily negative and characterized by concerns about environmental degradation and resources shortages. The sample believed that the worst effects of GPG were yet to come and would mostly be geographically and socially remote, with the world’s poorest people being worst affected. Despite their willingness to engage in risk management actions, our participants reported low self-efficacy and that governments, rather than individuals and communities, have the greatest capacity to influence GPG. The perceived risk of GPG was higher among UK residents than among US residents, indicating that GPG risk perceptions can vary between countries. Compared to their US counterparts, more UK residents reported directly observing more evidence of population growth in their community/country and believed that the worst impacts of GPG were more temporarily proximate. We found that worldviews were associated with much greater variance in overall perceived risk among the US (cf. UK) participants, with perceived risk being highest for US participants with egalitarian-communitarian worldviews and lowest for US participants with individualism-hierarchists worldviews. We also identified that our sample perceived the benefits of GPG as low and that their risk perceptions did not appear to be affected by media coverage of the eight billion milestone.

Taken together, our findings provide new insights into the factors that influence public perceptions of GPG and how these perceptions can influence the willingness to engage in behaviors that could mitigate and/or prevent some of the potential adverse outcomes associated with GPG.

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Contributors

Author: Ian Dawson

Author: Danni Zhang

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