Resident's concerns and attitudes towards Solid Waste Management facilities.

Because of limited space, the siting and construction of a new SWM facility is a big challenge in Japan. An SWM facility should be socially accepted as well as environmentally and economically sound. This study aimed to investigate people's concerns about SWM facilities and their attitudes towards such facilities. A questionnaire was designed based on literature reviews and was sent to residents in three municipalities with different backgrounds. The questions covered concerns on the impact of an SWM facility, management aspects, unfairness of facility siting, and attitudes to facility construction. Of the many concerns, "pollution and health effect" had the highest rating, followed by "reliability", "damage to nature" and "cost". The rating was different between municipalities, reflecting their geographic and social backgrounds. Using factor analysis, correlations among concerns were analyzed, and five principal components were extracted, namely "pollution", "nuisance", "facility management", "planning of facility", and "merit/demerit". Although obvious correlations were not found between individual items of concern and attitudes to construction of a facility, the discriminant analysis indicated dominant concerns of attitudes, but the disagreement between actual impact and citizens were found. As for attributes, the "opposed" attitude decreased for residents who had visited an SWM facility, even if they had only seen it from outside.

[1]  Judith Petts,et al.  Effective Waste Management: Understanding and Dealing With Public Concerns , 1994 .

[2]  Kenneth G. Willis,et al.  Estimating lost amenity due to landfill waste disposal , 1998 .

[3]  Don A. Cozzetto.  Quantitative Research in Public Administration , 1994 .

[4]  Margaret M. Kimmel,et al.  A Social Impact Assessment of the Brookville Reservoir on Union County, Indiana , 1981 .

[5]  Chris Zeiss,et al.  Waste disposal facilities and community response : tracing pathways from facility impacts to community attitude , 1991 .

[6]  Paul H. Templet,et al.  Political and environmental equity issues related to municipal waste incineration siting , 1996 .

[7]  Vicki Been,et al.  What’s Fairness Got to Do with It? Environmental Justice and the Siting of Locally Undesirable Land Uses , 1993 .

[8]  George Tchobanoglous,et al.  Integrated Solid Waste Management: Engineering Principles and Management Issues , 1993 .

[9]  Philip H. Pollock,et al.  Factors contributing to NIMBY attitudes , 1993 .

[10]  Henk A. Becker,et al.  SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT , 1986 .

[11]  P. Slovic.  Perception of risk. , 1987, Science.

[12]  Vicente Carabias,et al.  Social aspects of public waste management in Switzerland , 1999 .

[13]  T. F. Weaver,et al.  Evaluating Impacts from Noxious Facilities: Including Public Preferences in Current Siting Mechanisms , 1993 .

[14]  Gev Eduljee,et al.  Environmental Impact Assessment for Waste Treatment and Disposal Facilities , 1994 .

[15]  W. Freudenburg.  Social Impact Assessment , 2019, Rural Society in the U.S.: Issues for the 1980s.