Risk perception influences the perceived salience of various policy issues. In this study, we examine the pathways through which environmental identity influences the perceived salience of two kinds of policy issues—climate change (climate mitigation and climate adaptation) and development (economic growth and infrastructure). Based on a dataset of 503 respondents from coastal communities along the east coast of the United States, our findings indicate that environmental identity is associated with a greater perceived salience of climate mitigation, and that this relationship is mediated by hydrometeorological disaster risk perception. While we found no significant total effect of environmental identity on the perceived salience of climate adaptation, perceived salience of infrastructure development, and perceived salience of economic growth, hydrometeorological disaster risk perception was found to fully mediate all three relationships. Also, the mediated relationships were found to be significantly moderated by gender identity, but not by age (except for the perceived salience of infrastructure development). The study highlights the pivotal role of hydrometeorological risk perception in modifying the perceived importance of different policy issues among environmentalists and has implications for policy and planning in coastal regions.

风险认知影响各种政策问题的显着性认知。在这项研究中，我们研究了环境认同影响两种政策问题——气候变化（气候减缓和气候适应）和发展（经济增长和基础设施）——的显着性的途径。基于来自美国东海岸沿海社区的 503 名受访者的数据集，我们的研究结果表明，环境认同与气候缓解的更大感知显着性相关，并且这种关系是由水文气象灾害风险感知调节的。虽然我们发现环境认同对气候适应的感知显着性、基础设施发展的感知显着性和经济增长的感知显着性没有显着的总体影响，但发现水文气象灾害风险感知可以充分调节这三种关系。此外，发现中介关系显着受到性别认同的调节，但不受年龄的影响（除了基础设施发展的显着性）。该研究强调了水文气象风险认知在改变环保主义者对不同政策问题的认知重要性方面的关键作用，并对沿海地区的政策和规划具有影响。