Conferences

For years the public and scientific debate about Environmental Justice was mostly confined to the U.S. Only recently, the question about the existence and strength of the “social gradient” of environmental pollution has entered the European debate. Early research finds inconclusive results in the German speaking world, primarily because this preliminary research simply records subjective perceptions of pollution and correlates them with indicators of social status. Objective measures of environmental quality are seldom used, and even then only in studies of small geographic areas. In contrast, the present study uses various objective measures of air pollution (NO2, particulate matter, ozone) and road traffic noise (day, night) and assigns them to the respondents of the Swiss Environmental Survey 2007 (N=3’369) using a geographic information system (GIS). The combination of objective GIS coded data with subjective measures allows for a new approach in Environmental Sociology that takes spatial context into account, which is often neglected in sociological studies. Using bivariate and multivariate statistics this objective data on pollution is related to indicators of social stratification such as income, education and nationality as well as the subjective perception of pollution. Surprisingly, and contrary to the expectations, the indicators of social status (income and education) are not significantly correlated with the environmental pollutants considered. In the multivariate analysis, however, a significant correlation with income is observed, although this effect is fairly weak. Differences between urban areas and the countryside are more pronounced. Concerning the subjective perception deviations from the objective exposure can be observed for ozone.