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Objective: This article examines the relationship between environmental health threats, personal experiences with climate change, and their association with attitudes toward global warming and willingness to pay for clean energy. Methods: Using a nationally representative survey of Latino adults (n = 1200), we use categorical regressions to examine the relationship between environmental health threats and policy preferences. Results: Latinos who have personally experienced climate change and who view air pollution as a threat, are more likely to be concerned with climate change and believe that passing stricter environmental laws will improve the economy as opposed to reduce econonic growth. Latinos who have experienced climate change and worry about the impact of climate change in their homeland are also more willing to pay $5 or $10 for clean energy. Conclusion: This study has implications for our collective knowledge of Latinos' connections to the environment and policy outcomes and contributes to the growing area of environmental public opinion among ethno‐racial groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores Latino perceptions of commonality and competition with African Americans across the country, focusing on the South. Using the Latino National Survey (LNS), we test the existing inter-group relation theories using an original measurement approach. With the creation of relative measures of commonality and competition of Latinos toward Blacks, we find that Latinos perceive co-ethnics as a greater source of competition than Blacks when our relative measure is used to interpret Latino perceptions of competition with African Americans. Moreover, our results suggest that Latinos in the South have similar perceptions of commonality to Blacks as Latinos more generally, across both approaches that measure perceptions of commonality. Most importantly, we find that when the relative competition measure is employed, Latinos who live in Southern states do in fact have higher perceptions of competition with Blacks than Latinos at large. These trends provide a valuable addition to the extant literature focused on inter-group relations by emphasizing that not only place and context matter, but also the way perceptions of competition and commonality are measured and operationalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeownership's importance in America's culture and economy raises the possibility that status as a homeowner or renter constitutes a core aspect of personal identity, on par with race and ethnicity. A survey from the socially diverse Los Angeles region provides a unique data set to test the possibility that homeownership exaggerates or mitigates social cleavages, particularly those based on race or ethnicity. The analysis reveals renters as less upbeat than homeowners regarding a variety of opinion measures and distinctly divided in their opinions along racial and ethnic lines. Among homeowners, however, the authors find a confluence of opinion across racial and ethnic lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, half of residents surveyed report they anticipate another riot. Pessimism concerning the prospect of future riots is associated with negative assessments of life in Los Angeles--most notably negative perceptions of racial issues in the city. Demographic attributes including income, educational attainment, and duration of residency in Los Angeles are also associated with expectations of future riots. Racial or ethnic identity, however, have no appreciable director mediating impact on expectations of future riots, a striking finding in light of the central place race occupies in social science research and public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]