The essence of environmental social governance is the simultaneous involvement of individuals and organizations in multiple ways to manage environmental common affairs. Good governance requires the government to create an enabling context in its first place through institution building and policy making. To create an enabling context requires a fundamental understanding on what people think about the environmental problems and what shapes such perception. This paper aims to unravel these questions by analyzing and synthesizing what have been learned in the past fifty years on public perception toward environmental risks，to clarify misconception in current discussion on this topic and identify research questions in this field to be answered with priority in a Chinese setting.