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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Environ Psychol. 2021 Aug 21;77:101675. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101675

When Apologies become Meaningful: Perceptions of Apologies in Environmental Justice Communities

Michael J Perez 1, Jaren D Crist 2, Katie R Kirsch 3, Phia S Salter 4, Jennifer A Horney 5
PMCID: PMC8555765  NIHMSID: NIHMS1735963  PMID: 34720327

Abstract

In the United States, people of color from low income and working-class backgrounds are at disproportionate risk to pollution and other environmental stressors. These environmental justice communities (EJCs) can also experience increased risk when a natural disaster collides with a preexisting environmental risk. The current research is an exploratory field study that examines perceptions of environmental risk after a natural disaster and how meaningful a public apology would be in three communities. Residents (N=161) in two EJCs and a community without documented risks reported their environmental concerns and perceptions of public apologies. Overall, EJC residents reported greater concern about chemical hazard exposure than did residents with decreased risk. Furthermore, chemical exposure concerns facilitated public apology meaningfulness within the EJCs, but not in the decreased risk community.

Keywords: Public apologies, environmental justice communities, environmental racism

In recent years, the impact of environmental pollution on marginalized populations brings to mind Flint, Michigan. In 2014, a switch to a cheaper water source led to water contamination (Kennedy, 2016). This city is predominantly Black, low income, and vulnerable to pollution (Pulido, 2016). Termed environmental justice communities (EJCs; e.g., Bullard & Wright, 1993; Holifield, 2012), communities of color are vulnerable to environmental racism. In 1994, an Executive Order was issued to prevent “minority communities and low-income communities from being subject to disproportionately high and adverse environmental effects” (Executive Order 12898). However, these communities typically lack resources to prevent construction of harmful facilities nearby (Bullard, 1994; Downey, 2005).

Houston, Texas has been the site of numerous environmental calamities for EJCs (Chakraborty et al., 2014). In 2019, Houston experienced two toxic chemical fires and air pollution from a plastic production plant (Gill, 2019; Martin, 2019, Yan & Riess, 2019). Natural disasters can interact with these pollutants to elevate risk, and in 2017, Hurricane Harvey generated significant environmental damage in Houston (Chakraborty, 2017; Mooney, 2018). Flooding increased exposure to toxic waste (Tuminello et al., 2019; Lieberman-Cribben, Schwartz, & Taioli 2019) sparking fires and chemical explosions (Chapin, 2017; Newkirk, 2017a; RMS, 2017). Toxic pollutants from nearby facilities flooded into Latinx communities (Horney et al., 2018) and the lack of adequate stormwater infrastructure resulted in significant flood damage within Black communities (Rosales, 2017).

Although Harvey caused significant damage, responsibility can also be attributed to public and private entities. For instance, the aforementioned explosion caused by flooding was attributed to corporate oversight. First responders became ill from exposure to chemicals emitted from the explosion and a pending lawsuit argues that Houston has historically been at high risk for flooding when contingencies should have been made (Newkirk, 2017b).

When disasters occur, responsible parties are pressured to apologize. In the case of the British Petroleum oil spill off the Gulf Coast, an apology was offered for the damages (Lubin, 2010). But apologies should be perceived as meaningful and convey respect to have positive outcomes (De Cremer & Schouten, 2008). Good apologies address community social pain, signify norm violations, present a desire to begin on new terms, and offer reparative actions (Alberstein & Davidovitch, 2011). Although apologies alone are limited, prior research has suggested that public apologies can bridge trust and promote positive relations with victimized groups (Blatz, Day, & Schryer, 2014; Wohl, Hornsey, & Philpot, 2011).

In experimental settings, participants view a hypothetical company more favorably if a strong apology is provided in response to an oil spill (Gilbert, James, & Shogren, 2018). In Nova Scotia, however, actionless apologies to the Mi’kma’ki people have threatened reconciliation in light of the Alton Gas Storage Project, which mined salt deposits and dumped mining waste into nearby rivers (Bernard, 2018). With this research in mind, we conducted an exploratory study to examine community members’ perceptions of risk in Houston after Harvey and their perception of whether a public apology for these conditions would be meaningful. Though psychological science predominantly values laboratory approaches (Navarro, 2019; Rozin, 2009), we offer a simple, but ecologically valid study into whether apologies for elevated risk conditions would be meaningful in communities actually impacted by adverse environmental conditions.

1.1. Current Research

Previous research describes apologies as symbolically meaningful, but less research has addressed victimized perceptions of apologies (Berndsen, Hornsey, & Wohl, 2015). In this study we explored whether an apology would be more meaningful among EJC residents than among residents in decreased risk communities (DRC; communities with decreased environmental hazards) following Harvey. We were also interested in whether concerns about the environmental risk factors might facilitate public apology perceptions among EJCs. To examine these questions, we conducted a quasi-experimental field study in Houston, TX where we surveyed residents in three public parks about their perceptions of environmental risk and perceptions of public apologies for environmental risk conditions.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

We recruited 161 adults (MAge = 38.91; SD = 14.3) from three parks in Houston. Sixty-four participants were in a predominantly Latinx community park, 48 in a predominantly Black community park, and 49 in a racially diverse community park. There were 83 women and 56 men, 1 other (21 did not report). Reported racial/ethnic background included 43.5% Hispanic American/Latinx, 34.8% Black/African American, 14.3% European American/White, 3.1% Bi/Multi Racial, 1.2% Asian American/Pacific Islander, and 0.6% Arab/Arab-American (2.5% unreported). We aimed for 50 participants per cell/park (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2013). Data collection continued until we surveyed at least 50 people at each site. However, we were not able to reach this goal in all parks because we exhausted human resources (e.g., no new park attendees). The study was approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board.

2.2. Field Settings

The predominantly Latinx park was located in an EJC with an estimated population of about 2,900 residents who are 82% Hispanic/Latino (City of Houston Planning and Development/CHPD, 2017). The community has 21 facilities that report to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, 11 large quantity generators of hazardous waste, 4 facilities that dispose, treat or store hazardous wastes, 9 dischargers of air pollution, and 8 water discharging waste facilities (City of Houston Department of Health and Human Services/CHDHHS, 2003a). The predominantly Black EJC has an estimated population of about 20,000 who are 88% Black/African American (non-Hispanic) (CHPD, 2017). This community hosts 8 Toxic Release Inventory facilities, 3 large quantity generators of hazardous waste, 2 major dischargers of air pollutants, and 1 facility that treats, stores, or disposes of hazardous waste (CHDHHS, 2003b). They were considered EJCs as these communities of color are exposed to larger levels of environmental risk and have median incomes of about $35,000.

We also sampled a park without documented environmental risks. The neighborhood immediately adjacent to the park has about 5,500 residents with a median household income of $101,703 who are 54% White (non-Hispanic), 17% Asian (non-Hispanic), 16% Hispanic/Latinx, 10% Black (non-Hispanic), and 3% non-Hispanic “others” (City of Houston Planning and Development, 2017). This community is considered a DRC because there are no EPA reporting facilities nearby. We included this setting to contextualize our primary dependent variables (e.g., when an apology might be meaningful).

2.3. Procedure

We approached potential participants in the parks (2 EJCs; 1 DRC) and asked if they were willing to complete a short survey on their opinions about environmental conditions and public apologies. Participants provided verbal consent after they read an information sheet and confirmed they were at least 18 years old. Participants completed the survey in Spanish or English. All respondents were given the option to self-administer the survey or have the questions read to them. After completion of the survey, respondents received a $15 gift card via email or mail.

2.4. Measures

Measures outside the scope of the current manuscript were included in this study and can be found in the supplementary materials. All responses were provided on a 7-point Likert scale. See supplement for full scales.

2.4.2. Environmental Perceptions.

We assessed residents’ perceptions of environmental conditions before and after Harvey with six separate items. Initially we planned to assess environmental perceptions before and after Harvey separately; however, based on a factor analysis (principal axis, oblique rotation), two factors emerged collapsing ratings of water and air quality and concerns about chemical exposure across time. See supplemental materials for analyses of environmental perceptions before and after Harvey.

Chemical exposure concerns.

Two items (α = .84) assessed concerns about chemical exposure. Participants responded to, “How concerned were you about exposure to hazardous chemicals before [after] Hurricane Harvey?”

Air and water quality ratings.

Four items (α = .80) assessed perceptions of air and water quality. Items included, “How would you rate the air quality before [after] Hurricane Harvey?” and “How would you rate the water quality before [after] Hurricane Harvey?”

2.4.3. Perceptions of Public Apologies.

Six items (α = .94) measured participants’ feelings about an apology from the city, state, and a private waste company. For example, one prompt read: “Imagine that local city officials in Houston are considering apologizing for any possible health risks that may come from living in areas where there are facilities producing pollutants nearby”. Then, they indicated how much they would like an apology and how meaningful an apology would be from each source.

3. Results1

To provide focused tests of the hypothesized effect of community on outcomes of interest, we conducted orthogonal planned contrast tests (Abdi & Williams, 2010) with codes of (1/3, 1/3, −2/3,) and (1/2,−1/2,0) for the Latinx EJC, Black EJC, and racially mixed DRC, respectively. The first contrast tested the primary hypothesis that EJCs with elevated risk conditions will produce greater environmental concerns and greater appreciation of public apologies than the community with decreased environmental risk. Because we did not anticipate that the two elevated risk conditions would differ from each other, the second contrast tested this directly and examined whether the primary dependent variables differed between the two elevated risk conditions. Although the contrasts are our primary analyses, we follow convention and report results of omnibus ANOVA tests. A summary of means and standard deviations are in Table 1.

Table 1.

Means and Standard Deviations for Primary Dependent Variables by Community

Community
Latinx EJC Black EJC DRC Contrasts
M SD M SD M SD 1 2
Chemical Exposure 4.69 1.63 5.24 1.79 3.96 1.89 .66** .29
Air & Water Quality 4.24 1.18 4.18 1.25 4.34 1.04 −.08 −.03
Apology Local 4.82 1.82 4.94 2.16 4.19 1.70 .45* .06
Apology State 4.80 1.90 5.04 2.11 4.17 1.77 .49* .12
Apology Corporate 4.84 1.96 4.90 2.19 4.44 1.91 .28 .03
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Note. EJC= Environmental Justice Community; DRC= Decreased Risk Community. Contrast 1: EJCs vs DRC; Contrast 2: Black EJC vs Latinx EJC.

**

p≤.001

*

p≤.05.

3.2. Perceptions of Environmental Conditions

3.2.1. Chemical Risk Exposure.

Contrast tests were conducted within a repeated measures ANOVA, location (between-subjects factor) and chemical exposure (within-subjects factor), F (2, 157) = 6.45, p =.002, η2 = .076. The first contrast test demonstrated the first hypothesized effect of elevated risk conditions on concerns for chemical exposure, t (157) = 3.09, p =.002, d = .55. Participants in EJCs reported higher concerns about exposure to hazardous chemicals compared to participants in the DRC. The second contrast test suggested that the EJCs did not report significantly different levels of concern for chemicals when compared to each other, t (157) = 1.65, p =.10, d = .33.

3.2.2. Air & Water Quality.

Contrasts tests were conducted within a repeated measures ANOVA with location (between-subjects factor) and air/water quality (within-subjects factor), F (2, 158) = .231, p =.79, η2 = .000. The first contrast test did not provide support for the hypothesized effect of elevated risk conditions on ratings of air and water quality, t (158) = −.964, p =.34, d = .11. Participants in EJCs rated environmental quality similarly to those in the DRC. The second contrast test was also non-significant, t (158) = −0.26, p =.79, d = .05.

3.3. Perceptions of Apologies

We conducted the contrast tests within a repeated measures ANOVA model whereby location was a between-subjects factor and apology source was a within-subjects factor. The planned contrast test indicated that the DRC participants indicated less support for apologies than did the EJCs, Contrast 1= −.632, SE = .31, p = .044; 95% CI [−1.25, −0.16]. The EJCs did not differ from one another, Contrast 2= −.124, SE = .35, p =.727; 95% CI [−.824, .576]. The omnibus test of park was not significant, F (2, 151) = 2.074, p =.13, η2 = .026.

3.4. Mediation Analyses

We conducted exploratory mediation analyses to examine whether environmental concerns facilitated apology meaningfulness among the EJCs. We focus on local apology perceptions, but analyses of state and corporate apology perceptions are available in supplemental materials. We utilized Model 4 of the SPSS Process macro Version 3.4 (Hayes, 2018), with 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples to conduct a multicategory, parallel mediation analysis with air/water quality and chemical exposure concern mediators. Proposed mediators were standardized before being entered into the models. Figure 1 and Table 2 summarize the direct and indirect effects of community and environmental concerns on local apology support.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Open in a new tab

Effects of community and perceptions of environmental conditions on local apology support

Note. C1= contrast 1; C2 = contrast 2; EJC = environmental justice communities; DRC = decreased risk community. ***p<.001, **p<.01, *p<.05, +p<.09.

Table 2.

Summary of indirect effects of community on local apology support via perceptions of environmental conditions

b (SE) 95% CI Lower 95% CI Upper
Community→Chemical Exposure Concern→apology
 C1: EJC vs DRC .30(.13)* .078 .565
 C2: Black EJC vs Latinx EJC .20(.11) −.002 .429
Community→Air and Water Quality Ratings→apology
 C1: EJC vs DRC −.02(.05) −.146 .052
 C2: Black EJC vs Latinx EJC −.01(.06) −.153 .104
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Note. C1= contrast 1; C2 = contrast 2; EJC = environmental justice communities; DRC = decreased risk community.

*

p<. 05.

EJC Support for a Local Apology.

Participants in the EJCs (versus the DRC) indicated significantly greater concern for exposure to hazardous chemicals (t (153) = 3.34, p =.001). Similar to the earlier contrast tests, contrast 2 did not reach statistical significance, t (153) = 1.93, p =.06. Concern for chemical exposure in the community predicted support for an apology from local government (t (153) = 3.43, p =.0008). Bootstrapping results indicated that the relative indirect effect of living in an EJC (Contrast 1) on support of a local apology through chemical hazard concern was significant (b = .29, SE = .12; 95% CI [.0778, .5652]). The indirect effect of Contrast 2 (b = .20, SE = .11; 95% CI [−.0023, .4291]) was not significant. When accounting for the contrasts and perceived environmental quality (air and water) and chemical exposure concern (proposed mediators) as simultaneous predictors of reported support of an apology from local government, the overall model was significant R2 = .11, F (4, 149) = 4.41, p =.002. The relative direct effects of community location were not significant, (Contrast 1: t (153) = 1.25, p=.21; Contrast 2: t (153) = −0.15, p =.87). Overall, only chemical concern was a significant mediator between community (EJCs vs DRC) and apology meaningfulness from the local government (see Table 2).

However, consistent with the contrast analysis, there was no effect of community location on perceived air and water quality compared to the decreased risk community (Contrast 1: t (153) = −0.541, p =.59; Contrast 2: t (148) = −0.26, p =.79). Furthermore, perceived air and water quality in the community did not predict support of an apology from the local government [t (153) = 1.49, p =.14]. In other words, there is no evidence that air and water quality mediated the relationship between community and apology meaningfulness.

4. Discussion

In this study, EJCs reported higher concern for exposure to chemicals in comparison to a DRC. Though prior research suggests that the U.S. public underestimates the environmental concerns of POC (Pearson et al., 2018), this study suggested that residents in EJCs were especially concerned about environmental hazards. Additionally, EJC residents reported public apologies as more meaningful than did DRCs. In turn, it was EJC residents’ concerns for chemical exposure that facilitated the extent to which they would find a public apology meaningful. In other words, the greater the environmental risk concerns, the more meaningful public acknowledgement of those conditions would be. Notably, ratings of air and water quality did not vary by location and were not associated with apology perceptions. However, in Houston this form of pollution is viewed as city-wide; meanwhile, chemical factories are disproportionately located in EJCs (Botlaguduru, Kommalapati, & Huque, 2018).

Knowledge of environmental risk exposure carries a psychological burden (Bullard, 1990; Edelstein, 1988; Markstrom & Charley, 2002). For example, among residents living near a chemical plant, those who perceived higher exposure reported higher stress (Peek et al., 2009). After Uranium mining on Navajo land exposed residents to unsafe levels of radiation, reported anxiety persisted for decades (Markstrom & Charley, 2002). Moreover, these concerns often ignored by responsible parties (Checker, 2007; Pearson et al., 2018). Although apologies are not a panacea, they may be meaningful to residents living in EJCs because they acknowledge harm.

Although this study provides initial evidence that residents of EJCs were concerned about environmental risks, this study had limitations. The survey was short in consideration of residents’ time. As such, this research may prompt more questions than answers. Some results were not statistically significant; however, they may still be of substantive importance to residents, stakeholders, or policy makers (Greenland et al., 2016). Response bias may have led residents to over report concerns if they felt this would lead to action following Hurricane Harvey, which impacted Houston just before this research. This bias is prevalent in self-report data. However, we join calls for more research that captures environmental concerns in diverse communities. Communities of color are not typically centered in discussions of environmentalism, but are indeed actively concerned (Mohai, 2003; Pearson et al., 2018; Song et al., 2020). Psychological research that not only attends to, but highlights these communities, provide the much-needed groundwork for theories and interventions contextualized within the experiences of marginalized communities (Rozin, 2009; Yarkoni, 2019).

Supplementary Material

1

Highlights.

  • Communities of color report the greatest concerns for chemical exposure risk

  • Chemical risk concerns facilitate public apology support in communities of color

  • Residents in Houston, TX are concerned about environmental hazards and their health

Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P42ES027704. Additionally, we would like to extend our appreciation to Gaston Casillas for his help in translating study materials into Spanish as well as Mario Zuniga for his input on conducting research in communities of Houston.

Footnotes

1

Data available upon request of corresponding author

Authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

Contributor Information

Michael J. Perez, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University

Jaren D. Crist, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University

Katie R. Kirsch, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Texas A&M University

Phia S. Salter, Department of Psychology, Davidson College

Jennifer A. Horney, College of Health Sciences, The University of Delaware

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