The effects of mitigating inequity burden on public acceptance of reusing the removed soil

Abstract

This study examined the factors affecting public acceptance of the designation of areas in the Recycling Demonstration Project for Soil Generated from Decontamination Activities. The designated areas are requested to receive the soil collected after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. This introduces what typically known as a Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) issue, which dominates around the inequitable allocation of a given burden and hinders the building of consensus. This study assumed that allocating the burden to multiple locations instead of only one location would increase acceptance. An experiment was conducted which presented a scenario manipulating the burden allocation amongst a sample of adults requited from all over Japan. The results revealed that participants who were allocated to the multiple-locations condition evaluated the situation as having less inequity, fewer risks and stigma, and a fairer procedure, as well as being more acceptable than those who were allocated to the one-place condition.

Important factors for public acceptance of the final disposal of contaminated soil and wastes resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station accident

“…This suggests that many respondents felt it was unfair to locate a final disposal site only close to their residential area. Yokoyama et al [ 19 ] showed that acceptance was encouraged by pursuing distributive fairness if recycled decontaminated soil was used in multiple places, which is consistent with the results of this study. In addition, our results showed that the relative importance of distributional fairness through sharing the actual burden was greater than that of procedural fairness.…”

“…In addition, regardless of the number of disposal sites, it is impossible to completely correct any unfairness in the distribution because there are people living both close to and far from each disposal site. Accordingly, it is necessary to pursue consensus along with a fair procedure, in line with the public’s preference, as suggested in previous studies [ 19 , 32 ]. It may be possible to reduce the difficulties in acceptance because of the perception of high risk and low trust in the government by ensuring that the decision process follows a fair procedure.…”

“…We chose four attributes for our study, three of which were based on previous studies, namely the distance from the residential area to the final disposal site [ 6 – 8 ], and two types of fairness, procedural fairness, which was related to the decision process [ 13 – 15 ], and distributive fairness, related to the total number of final disposal sites [ 19 ]. The fourth attribute was the volume and radioactivity concentration of the removed soil and incinerated ash and was related to the research and development on volume reduction technology, carried out by the Ministry of the Environment and used to foster public understanding [ 3 ].…”

“…This examined the preference for distributive fairness. We followed the direct inequity mitigation approach used by Yokoyama et al [ 19 ] to evaluate the locations of the disposal sites. We used the following categories: only one location in Japan; a total of eight locations, meaning one location in each of the eight regional divisions, or a total of 46 locations, meaning one in each prefecture in Japan, excluding Fukushima Prefecture.…”

“…However, several studies have shown that attempts to maintain equilibrium through monetary compensation do not always lead to public acceptance [ 16 – 18 ]. For example, Yokoyama et al [ 19 ] found that direct inequity mitigation, i.e., actual burden sharing, affects public acceptance. A web-based questionnaire survey throughout Japan to gather information about the acceptance of recycling the decontaminated soil from the Fukushima accident as civil engineering materials showed that public acceptance was higher for use in multiple locations than in a single location [ 19 ].…”