Understanding air quality perception and severity among residents of Taman Tasik Biru, Selangor: article

This study aimed to assess the air quality perception and severity among residents of Taman Tasik Biru, Selangor as well as the residents' behaviour on health risk of air pollution, and the relationship between respondents’ education level and air quality severity in Taman Tasik Biru. Data collection through an online questionnaire survey was distributed among the residents via mobile application for the duration of three weeks. The main content of the investigation includes background information, perceived severity of air quality among residents of Taman Tasik Biru, and residents’ health risk perception on air quality. Out of 525 residents, 101 people took part as respondents in the survey. The percentages of respondents reporting each aspect of air quality awareness, health risk perception, and the relationship between education level and perceived severity were calculated and weighted. Overall result shows that the percentage of female respondents (61.4%) is higher than male respondents (38.6%). For the severity of air quality in Taman Tasik Biru, “Good” recorded the highest percentage (47.5%), and it was observed that more than half of the respondents (78.3%) agreed that air pollution is dangerous to health. Lastly, Chi-Square Tests were conducted to identify the association of air quality severity and education level of the respondents, and the null hypothesis was accepted because the p-value was greater than 0.05. It has been found that in this study, education level did not portray individual’s opinion on the severity of air quality. Therefore, it can be concluded that both personal and contextual factors have to be taken into account in order to understand respondents reactions to air quality perception.