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Socioeconomic Conditions and Perceptions of Environmental Risks in the Mekong Delta, VietnamDanet Haka, Kazuo Nadaokaa, and Vo Le Phub a Department of Mechanical and Environmental Inform

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Coastal Management

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Socioeconomic Conditions and Perceptions of Environmental Risks in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam Danet Hak, Kazuo Nadaoka & Vo Le Phu

To cite this article: Danet Hak, Kazuo Nadaoka & Vo Le Phu (2016) Socioeconomic Conditions

and Perceptions of Environmental Risks in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, Coastal Management,44:6, 585-605, DOI: 10.1080/08920753.2016.1233796

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2016.1233796

Published online: 04 Nov 2016.

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Socioeconomic Conditions and Perceptions of Environmental Risks in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Danet Haka, Kazuo Nadaokaa, and Vo Le Phub

a Department of Mechanical and Environmental Informatics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan;

b Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology – Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effects of sociodemographic and economic

status on the differences in environmental awareness, risk perception,

and stewardship of the Mekong Delta residents based on a survey

conducted in person with 1,006 households across the delta system.

Spatial visualization and a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA)

were performed on the survey results to discover underlying factors of

the participants ’ responses The study results revealed that public

environmental awareness in the Mekong Delta is still limited The level

of environmental awareness, risk perception, and understanding of

stewardship of local people varies by location Furthermore, how the

Mekong Delta dwellers perceive environmental risks and behave

toward environmental protection is unlikely to be in fluenced by their

demographic pro files However, they are significantly affected by the

economic status including income levels and sources Poor economic

status was found to signi ficantly hamper pro-environmental behavior of

Mekong Delta people regardless of their knowledge of environmental

degradation and the related consequences These findings provide key

information to assist policymakers in developing a successful and

sustainable disaster risk reduction mitigation plan for the Mekong Delta

region The implications may also be applicable for other coastal zones,

which are composed of similar sociodemographic, economic, and

environmental conditions.

KEYWORDS

coastal environment; environmental risk perception; mega delta

Introduction

The knowledge of public risk perception is essential in sociopolitical decision-making(Leiserowitz2006; Sj€oberg2000; Slovic1999), which determines the direction of socioeco-nomic development In developing a successful and sustainable disaster risk reduction miti-gation plan against known environmental risks, understanding public risk perception iscritical because it informs policymakers of how to appropriately evaluate the vulnerability of

a socioecological system to a particular hazard However, public perception regarding ronmental risk is often overlooked or otherwise underestimated given that human

envi-CONTACT Danet Hak hakdanet1986@gmail.com Department of Mechanical and Environmental Informatics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, W207, Ookayama West 8 Building, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 152-8552.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ucmg

2016, VOL 44, NO 6, 585 –605

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2016.1233796

perception is not easy to study Different people may perceive an identical risk differentlydepending on how they define that risk (Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein1982) The pro-cess by which a person perceives a risk is complex and relies on both cognitive and situa-tional factors (Tobin and Montz 1997), which are interdependent The cognitive factorsreflect the personality and psychological behavior (e.g., preference and emotion) of a person,while the situational factors involve the level of awareness or experience of hazardous events,the sociodemographic, and the economic profile of an individual (Bradford et al.2012) Situ-ational factors such as the sociodemographic profile and economic status of a population areknown to greatly influence public perception of environmental risk People from differentdemographic and economic backgrounds (e.g., age, gender, education, ethnicity, and eco-nomic group) perceive risk differently For instance, one study found that American whitemen tend to generally express a lower perception of risk compared to others (Melissa et al.

2010), while another study claimed that women, people who were not well educated, people

of low income, young people, and black people are groups that are likely to perceive a greaterlevel of risk (Savage 1993) Other studies investigated the effect of residential location onenvironmental risk perception and found that the people who reside farther from the siteswhere known hazards are most likely to occur generally perceive more risk than those wholive near the hazardous area (e.g., Lindell and Earle 1983; MacGregor et al 1994; Roger

1984) In addition, the results of some other studies claimed that even cultural practices(Fortner and Daun2010) and political preferences (Carlton and Jacobson2013) can affectthe way a person perceives environmental risks The aforementioned descriptions portraythat understanding public perception of an environmental risk is problematic, but it is vitaland inevitable in developing mitigation plan against the impacts of environmental hazards.The Vietnamese Mekong Delta is a highly populated mega delta in Asia that is most vul-nerable to climate change (Woodroffe 2010; Yusuf and Francisco 2010) It is currentlythreatened by complex environmental problems To promote the sustainability of this megadelta system, proper mitigation strategies and management plans are required To that end,understanding the public perception of current environmental threats in this deltaic region

is vital Unfortunately, due to inadequate research, public perception remains poorly stood In the present study, we examined the perception of a sample of the VietnameseMekong Delta people toward existing environmental threats and investigated whether socio-demographic and economic factors had any effect on their environmental awareness, riskperception, and willingness to protect the environment The specific goals of this study were

under-to answer the following questions: (1) Are all Mekong Delta dwellers equally aware of theenvironmental concerns in their region? (2) Do sociodemographic and economic factorssuch as income level, income source, gender, and geographical location affect how theMekong Delta people perceive environmental risks? (3) Do sociodemographic and economicfactors affect the behavior of Mekong Delta people toward environmental protection?

Overview of the study area

The Mekong Delta region has a total area of about 39,500 km2 It is the most tive agricultural land and an important economic development zone in Vietnam(Figure 1) It contributes to approximately 50% of the staple food crops and 60% offish production in Vietnam (Be, Sinh, and Miller 2007) and is home to 17.5 millionpeople, of which 80% live in rural communities (GSOV 2013) The average population

produc-density in this delta system is approximately 431 inhabitants/km2, with a naturalincrease rate of 0.83% per year (GSOV 2013) The highly populated zones are foundnear the main stream of the Mekong River and tributaries (Figure 2), indicating theimportance of the river network to the delta people The socioeconomic development

of this region depends heavily on its natural resources that include a dense hydrologicalnetwork, fertile alluvial soil, and a diverse ecological system, providing various eco-nomic opportunities These resources are also responsible for the spatial variability ofsocioeconomic activities across the entire delta region Despite its beneficial naturalresource and its important role in the development of the Vietnamese economy, theMekong Delta is threatened by multiple environmental problems and is very sensitive

to the effects of climate change For instance, the delta experiences seasonal floods,saline intrusion, acidic soil, and riverbank erosion that are prevalent natural hazards,posing challenges to the livelihood of the Mekong Delta community In addition tothese natural factors, human activities such as improper waste management, excessiveuse of agrochemical products, and over exploitation of natural resources (e.g., ground-water) are exacerbating the environmental degradation of this deltaic region In futureclimate change scenarios, these environmental threats are predicted to become moresevere, potentially putting the livelihood of the delta’s population at risk However, the

Figure 1.Location map of the study area showing the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, river network, and vey locations

sur-level of risk might be spatially different depending on the geological setting and tive capacity of each subregion Given this context, understanding the Mekong Deltapeople’s perception of current environmental risks, their responsibility to become stew-ards for environmental protection, and factors affecting their perception will allow poli-cymakers to prioritize key concerns, identify vulnerable groups, and properly pinpointthe disaster risk reduction/mitigation strategies to deal with present and future environ-mental threats To date, few studies have investigated public perception of environmen-tal risks in the Mekong Delta Nguyen et al (2012, 2015) and Le Dang et al (2013,

adap-2014) investigated farmers’ perceptions of climate change impacts and their adaptations

in some parts of the delta The results of their studies provide insight on climatechange awareness, risk perception, and adaptation practices among the groups of farm-ers and agricultural specialists who participated in the studies These results are highlyuseful for designing mitigation plans against climate change impacts However, theirimplications are limited to specific groups of people (e.g., farmers and agricultural spe-cialist) and constrained to only a subregion, which make them insufficient to representthe perception of the entire delta population Furthermore, given the complexity of theenvironmental problems in the Mekong Delta region, understanding public perception

on climate change alone is inadequate to identify proper management strategies for the

Figure 2.Distribution of population density in 2012

entire system The present study attempts to fill this research gap by investigating theawareness and risk perceptions of local people from various sociodemographic and eco-nomic backgrounds toward current environmental problems across the entire MekongDelta.

Questionnaire design and survey method

In order to answer the research questions introduced in the“Introduction” section, son survey was conducted in January 2015 at 33 sites (each site encompassing a buffer zone

in-per-of 2-km radius) across the entire Mekong Delta (Figure 1) During this survey, 1,006 holds from various sociodemographic and economic backgrounds were interviewed follow-ing a predesigned questionnaire The interviewed households were selected on-site using asystematic random sampling method Given the differences in demographics, within thedowntown area, every tenth household was interviewed, while on the outskirts of town, everyfifth household was selected However, this rule was not applicable for a few cases due to theunavailability of a household representative or a denial to participate in the study For suchcases, the next household was interviewed instead (e.g., in the downtown area, the eleventhhousehold was interviewed if the tenth one was not approachable) In order to examinewhether the characteristics of the residential location contributed any effect to environmen-tal awareness, risk perception, and sense of stewardship in the Mekong Delta community,the interviewed households were categorized into three groups according to their residentiallocations:flood-affected groups, city neighborhood groups, and saline-affected groups Thesegroups were predefined based on the typical ecological characteristics of the survey location

house-In particular, theflood-affected groups are located close to the main river in the upstreamdelta where serious impacts of seasonalflooding are common The city neighborhood groupsare those located in the central delta, close to the major road connecting Can Tho city and

Ho Chi Minh City and those residing in Can Tho city These groups are typically lessaffected by seasonalflooding and saline intrusion Furthermore, owing to their proximity tomajor urban areas, these groups also have more opportunities to engage in various economicactivities compared to people who live in the other regions The groups designated as saline-affected are households located in the coastal provinces where the effect of saline intrusion isdominant The distribution of the three household groups is given inFigure 3 Due to timeand budget constraints, this survey was conducted only within and near the town or districtcenters

The questionnaire consisting of 31 questions was designed to acquire three types of mation: (1) household socioeconomic and demographic information; (2) water resourcesand perception of water quality for domestic and agricultural uses; and (3) environmentalrisk, awareness, and stewardship The last type contains questions about general awareness

infor-of environmental hazards, risk perception infor-offlood and water quality degradation (WQD),and stewardship for environmental protection and conservation.Table 1shows some of theimportant questions aimed specifically at inquiring about public awareness, risk perception,and environmental stewardship The closed question format was used for all questions inthe questionnaire except for the questions regarding age and household size where the openquestion format was employed Unlike the open format questionnaire, a closed format ques-tionnaire allows only a limited number of answer choices for each question, which makes iteasier to manage during the interview, makes the results easier to encode and analyze,

enables comparisons and quantification, is more likely to produce fully completed naires, and avoids unrelated responses (Sarantakos2005) In addition, ending terms such as

question-“Other, please specify,” “No idea,” and “Don’t know” were also included to minimize theeffect of limiting the respondents’ answer choices, which sometimes impairs the reliability ofsurvey results The answer choices of each question in the entire questionnaire were givenonly as nominal responses (categorical answers such as male, female, farmer, or non-farmer)and ordinal responses (ranking format such as not affected, slightly affected, moderatelyaffected, or strongly affected)

Data analysis

All collected information wasfirst compiled into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet naires containing missing data were excluded from the data table, leaving 976 questionnairesfor further analysis In order to identify the association between sociodemographic, eco-nomic factors, public environmental awareness, risk perceptions, and behavior toward envi-ronmental protection in the Mekong Delta region, the completed questionnaires were

Question-Figure 3.Distribution of the respondent household groups (numeral attached to each location indicatesthe number of respondents)

subjected to a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which is a multivariate descriptivedata analytic method Using this method, the interrelationships between the levels of environ-mental awareness, risk perception, and environmental protection and conservation stewardshipwere all revealed simultaneously Because MCA is capable to analyze the relationship patternamong categorical variables, which comprise several intra-variable levels, it is the most suitableapproach for this study (Abdi and Valentin 2007) A further advantage is that the analysisresults from the MCA can be presented as clouds of points in a low-dimensional space andthus provide a global picture of the relationship patterns among the variables Thefirst step inthe MCA calculation is to convert the categorical variables to a binary format of 0 and 1, andcompile them in an indicator matrix, where rows represent questionnaire responses and col-umns contain artificial variables representing categories of the variables Then, the standardcorrespondence analysis process with an adjusted explained variance can be applied to theindicator matrix to determine the principal factors (coordinates) that explain most of the datavariability and to identify the distributions of variables and variables’ categories along each fac-tor dimension The mathematical expression of this method is given by Abdi and Valentin(2007) To facilitate the data preparation procedure and enhance the visualization of theresults, only the variables that directly infer sociodemographic, economic factors, level of envi-ronmental awareness, risk perception, and behavior toward environmental protection wereselected for this analysis.Table 2provides a description of these selected variables.

In addition to the aforementioned statistical analysis, a spatial visualization technique wasalso performed using mapping tools from Geographic Information System (GIS) software.This spatial visualization illustrates the distribution and variability of the sociodemographic,economic status, environmental awareness, risk perception, and the sense of stewardship of alocal community, representing the entire delta system Understanding the spatial variability

of these parameters is very important for developing management strategies to avoid furtherconflict among resource users from different subregions, while still meeting the needs of the

Table 1.Summary of some core questions of the questionnaire aimed at inquiring about public ness, perceptions, and stewardship toward environmental concerns in the Mekong Delta

aware-General awareness and experiences 1 Have you heard about any environmental concerns in your area?

2 What is the most serious environmental concern in your area?

3 Are you satis fied with the quality of your water for: (a) domestic use; (b) agricultural use?

4 According to your observation, how has the water quality in the river/canals in your area changed in recent years?

5 Do you think water quality degradation is a serious problem in your area?

6 What do you think are the causes of water quality degradation in your area?

7 How often does it flood in your area?

8 According to your observation, how has flooding in your area changed in recent years?

9 Have you ever experienced water shortage for your farm?

Environmental risk perception and

stewardship for environmental

protection/conservation

10 How does flooding affect your livelihood?

11 Do you think water quality degradation affects your livelihood?

12 Who do you think should be responsible for environmental degradation in your area?

13 In your opinion, how can local community help to minimize the risk of environmental disaster in your area?

14 Do you think environmental education programs should be conducted in your area?

15 Do you think environmental conservation can help to ensure the sustainability

of your livelihood (e.g., sustain source of income)?

entire delta population However, despite this usefulness, this spatial visualization techniquehas generally not been determined or presented in previous public perception studies.

Results and discussion

Characteristics of the respondents

In general, the respondents who participated in this survey were aged from 20 to over

50 years with the majority being in their 40s and older Of the total respondents, 45.43%were women and 54.57% were men, with different sociodemographic and economic profilesbased on residential location, household size, and income levels and sources Specifically,56.46% of the respondents belonged to medium-sized families (4–6 members), 32.50% werefrom small families (1–3 members), and only 10.04% belonged to large families where therewere at least 7 family members About 70.09% of the respondents reported that they hadresided in the Mekong Delta since before 1980, while only 7.53% of them were relativelynew residents who started living in the Mekong Delta between 2010 and the present Thisindicates that the majority of the households were non-migrant residents who have likelylived in this area since birth or since their parents’ generation Details of the aforementioned

Table 2.Variables used for identifying public awareness, perception, and stewardship toward mental concerns in this study

50 and above

3 Residential location Flood-affected group

City neighbor group Saline-affected group

Livestock-based farmer Crop-based farmer Employee/factory and construction worker

Other income source and unemployed

Medium income High income Awareness of environmental

issues

6 Awareness of general environmental problem

Unaware Slightly aware Aware Economic and environmental

risk perception

7 Flood risk perception Not perceived

Slightly perceived Moderately perceived Highly perceived

8 Water quality degradation (WQD) risk perception

Perceived Not perceived Environmental protection/conservation

stewardship

9 Perspective of environmental protection responsibility

Positive Neutral Negative

10 Perspective for environmental conservation toward sustainable livelihood

Positive Neutral Negative

demographics are presented in Figure 4 About 41.05% of the respondents lived in income households, and 34.92% lived in medium-income households Monthly income was

low-in the range of 2–5 and 5–10 million Vietnam Dong (M.VND), respectively High-incomehouseholds reported a monthly income of 10–20 M.VND and accounted for 10.19% of therespondents The very high-income households (monthly income>20 M.VND) accountedfor only 1.88% At least 11.97% of the respondents were from very low-income families,reporting monthly incomes of less than 2 M.VND The definition of income levels used inthis study are in accordance with the per capita poverty threshold defined by the government

of Vietnam for the period of 2011–2015 and personal knowledge of the authors regardingcurrent living standards in the Mekong Delta region In addition to income levels, respond-ents also differed in income sources The majority of income sources included small busi-nesses (family businesses such as leasing rooms, variety stores, and food stalls), employee(i.e., construction and factory workers, cashiers, saleswomen, salesmen, and technicians),crop cultivating, raising livestock (including both animal husbandry and aquaculture pro-duction), transportation service (providers), and product dealers About 23% of the respond-ents reported having more than one job to support their households In addition, at least1.19% of the respondents were unemployed, and 14.21% were dependent on pension moneyand support from relatives.Figure 5 illustrates the details of the reported income sourcesand income levels

Sociodemographic and economic spatial patterns and corresponding environmentalrisk perceptions and stewardship

Spatial pattern of sociodemographic and economic conditions

As illustrated inFigure 6, there was no significant difference in sociodemographic factorsamong different parts of the Mekong Delta In contrast, economic situations vary drasticallyacross the deltaic system Small- to medium-sized households are dominant in all parts ofthe delta region, with a small proportion of large households present in areas closer to thecoastline (Figure 6a) Economic activities vary spatially across the delta region Small busi-ness is the major economic activity in most of the surveyed areas However, as most of the

Figure 4.Household characteristics of the respondents

survey locations were within or in proximity to the town and district center where businessesare more profitable compared to other economic activities, this result may not indicate thatsmall business is the livelihood for majority of the people in the Mekong Delta Livestockraising (mostly aquaculture), more developed in the coastal provinces compared to otherparts of the delta (GSOV2013), is the livelihood in most of the saline-affected zones and in

a few of theflood-affected zones Crop-cultivating farmers exist in every part of the delta tem in different proportions, although they tend to be more numerous in the upper part ofthe central delta than in any other locations Economic groups such as employees, whichinclude factory and construction workers, tend to be located in coastal provinces and thecentral delta rather than in the upper delta region The details of this spatial trend in incomesources are outlined inFigure 6b Household income levels are significantly different fromone part of the delta region to another (Figure 6c) Those residing in the city neighborhood

sys-or the central delta in proximity to Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh cities comprise the highestincome groups since they have more access to business opportunities In addition, the influ-ence of natural phenomena such asfloods and saline intrusion also affect this group less.The income levels of theflood-affected groups and saline-affected groups are comparable,with slight variations from site to site (Figure 6c) Similar to the variation in income levels,livelihood perception is also spatially different across the delta system (Figure 6d) In general,Mekong Delta residents described their current livelihoods as neutral (livelihood conditionsremain the same compared to past periods), or otherwise negative (have worsened) rather

Figure 5.Economic characteristics of the respondents: (top) household average monthly income; (bottom)household income sources (23% of the households had more than on source of income)