Concern for and perceived impacts to the Everglades: The role of environmental knowledge and cultural worldviews

Public support for restoration in sensitive ecosystems like the Everglades depends in part on individual-level concern and perceptions of impact from environmental threats. This study examines how environmental knowledge and ideological and political factors (IPFs)– cultural worldview (CWV), political ideology, and voting behavior – influence Floridians’ concern for the Everglades and their perceptions of impact for six different threats to the Everglades. Two of these threats, sea level rise and changes in precipitation, relate directly to climate change and thus are more likely to evoke ideological or political responses from participants. Analysis of our sample of 1437 Floridians reveals that: (1) Of the IPFs, CWV had the largest influence on environmental concern and perceptions of impact, except for in the case of sea level rise, for which voting behavior superseded CWV, (2) environmental knowledge had a larger influence on perceptions of impact for environmental threats that are not ideologically entangled (e.g. water quality), (3) IPFs had a larger influence on perceptions of impact from threats that are ideologically entangled (i.e. sea level rise and changes in precipitation), and (4) those with Communitarian-Egalitarian worldviews held higher levels of concern and perceived greater risk impacts on all but one of the threats (invasive species), although some differences vary across the distribution of environmental knowledge. These findings improve our understanding of how environmental knowledge and IPFs shape public concern for and perceptions of threats to the Greater Everglades ecosystem. These insights can help in developing communication strategies that generate public support for restoration.