Lasting impacts and perceived inequities: community reappraisal of the siting of a regional biosolids processing facility in rural Ontario

This paper presents a comparative study of the shift in community perceptions pre- and post-siting of a biosolids processing facility – the Organic Material Recovery Centre – in the rural Township of Southgate, Ontario. The study responds to the need for comparative studies examining residents’ perceptions of contested noxious facilities during acrimonious siting processes and later during facility operations. Interviews were conducted before and after the techno-industrial facility was sited to compare community perceptions of the proposed and operational facility, and further examine residents’ experiences with residual impacts and reflections on the siting process. Results reveal that once the facility began operations and residents had the opportunity to understand its operational mandate and directions, many residents seem to accept the facility as less threatening to well-being, quality of life and core values. Nonetheless, sustained community concerns shifted to invisible impacts and long-term uncertainty. Findings highlight lingering intra-community conflict between those supporting and those who remained concerned about negative impacts. As a result of the hostile community conflict, the local politics seems to have morphed into a ‘one-issue’ political scene, whereby all issues are divided along the lines of municipal councillors opinions of the facility These findings make methodological contributions with pre- and post-siting comparative qualitative research and contribute theoretically to our understanding of residents’ reappraisal of contested noxious techno-industrial facilities, show sustained divisive social impacts within the community, and call for meaningful consultation and increased participatory siting processes that accounts for the diversity of values and expectations during facility siting.     

Communities as a risk in mining: managing community legitimacy

Abstract

Using three cases from mining multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Armenia, this article conceptualises community risk, providing an alternative framework to conventional risk management approaches when managing local community relations. These approaches have been struggling to capture the increasingly complex risks originating from communities – both those who are directly affected by mining activities and the ones who have a vested interest in mining. The article defines two types of community relations which mining companies manage: communities of place (CofP), who live near the mine and are directly affected by its operations, and communities of interest (CofI), who are outside interest groups either opposing or supporting a given project. Community risks arise when CofPs create meaning about the legitimacy of the changes introduced into their physical and social environment, leading them to take action that affects the MNEs’ risk exposure to political, cultural or financial risks. The CofP can present these types of risks by acting alone or in cooperation with the CofI, who often have the resources and knowhow to affect corporate decision-making. The article contributes by defining community risk as an increasingly salient source of uncertainty for mining companies and MNEs in particular. Conceptualising community risk as the lack of legitimacy with these important stakeholder groups enables MNEs to strategise and adopt practices which are adapted to the local context. At the same time it assures investors, political and cultural stakeholders that the communities who have a specific interest in the project accept its impact.     

How do incentives influence local public support for the siting of shale gas projects in China?

Abstract

In 2016, China became the third largest producer of shale gas in the world. The Chinese central government has been supporting shale gas development since 2011. There are hopes that shale gas development, along with major efforts in renewable energy systems, can bring a fundamental change in the nation’s current coal-dependent energy system. Numerous challenges have slowed implementation including resistance to development of the industry by local residents living near shale gas sites. A significant body of research has examined the effectiveness of incentives in changing risk perceptions and attitudes toward the siting of industrial projects in the Western context. The present research identifies whether governmental incentives increase the extent of local support for shale gas projects in the Chinese context. Specifically, this paper strives to study two types of incentives: direct compensation to households bearing the potential negative impacts of shale gas projects and, household compensation accompanied by allocation of a portion of the shale tax revenues to local communities where the development occurs. An online survey with an embedded experiment was designed and conducted in August 2016 in five Chinese provinces where there are current or future shale gas projects. The experiment shows that household compensation alone or in combination with community reinvestment significantly increases local support of shale gas projects. Further, we found that the respondents most likely to be supportive after the experimental treatments are those who are young, more highly educated, have higher income, and perceive themselves as living close to a project. This research sheds light on how incentives might help contribute to resolution of siting controversies or prevent the onset of such controversies.     

A method for building community resilience to climate change in emerging coastal cities

Rapidly urbanising coastal locations represent prototypes of future cities. While these “sea change” locations will face a range of issues associated with rapid growth such as infrastructure provision and enhancement of social capital, anticipated environmental impacts are likely to add significant challenges. Climate change is likely to have dramatic impacts on sea change communities through diminished potable water supplies, rising sea levels, storm surges, and increased intensity of flood events - with indirect impacts on health, financial sectors, and biodiversity. Given the inherent diversity within sea change communities with regard to age, culture, and socio-economic status there are likely to be differences in ways of adapting, the ability to adapt, and the desired direction of any changes. Cognizant of the potential enormity of climate change impacts, the need for rapid responses, and the diversity within communities, this paper proposes a participatory and transformative method to work with communities in responding to climate change and variability within rapidly urbanising coastal locations. The method focuses on determining probable futures for various communities of place and interest within sea change areas and aims to build the capacity for dynamic on-going learning to achieve those futures, both within and between the communities. Through this process community members may be empowered with dynamic and future-orientated learning skills that build upon community knowledge, innovation, and resilience.     

The impact of community expectations on corporate community involvement disclosures in the UK

Despite increase mistrust between corporations and societies in the aftermath of the global corporate misbehaviours, the literature examining the impact of community concerns on corporate communications is undeveloped. Our paper is timely; it contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by considering the impacts of community expectations on Corporate Community Involvement Disclosures (CCID) using a ten-year panel study. We advance CSR communication research by providing a fresh theoretical perspective – media-agenda-setting theory – to the broad CSR debate and the CCID subset of this debate. Our findings support the media-agenda theoretical expectation and provide important practice and policy recommendations for improving interactions between corporations and their communities.     

Effective risk communication and CCS: the road to success in Europe

Over the past ten years or so, there have been multiple attempts to site and build carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities in Europe, North America and elsewhere. To date, most of those attempts have not been successful. In Europe, for example, there are currently no commercial CCS facilities in operation. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from lack of political will, the collapsing price of CO₂, lack of commercial drivers to capture and store CO₂, and public opposition to the proposed facilities. There have been several case studies examining the communication challenges associated with the siting of CCS facilities. Up till now, most of this research has been carried out by climate change or carbon policy experts as well as social researchers rather than scientists representing the wider risk communication community, aside from some notable exceptions. This study does the opposite by examining CCS from a broader risk communication perspective. It provides a brief overview of risk communication theory in order to situate some of the findings of the CCS communication research, and then, it makes some recommendations on how the siting of CCS facilities could be improved including the importance of trust, proactive communication and early stakeholder involvement. In conclusion, this study notes that if the science associated with the technology is communicated in the correct manner and if the key risk communication recommendations are adhered to, then the siting of future CCS facilities should be successful.     

Involving community members in preparedness and resiliency involves bi-directional and iterative communication and actions: a case study of vulnerable populations in New Jersey following superstorm Sandy

Abstract

Recent increases in hurricanes and other weather events have brought to light the importance of understanding what people think should be done to improve recovery and resiliency in their communities. While most studies focus only on perceptions of concerns, effects, medical issues and personal preparedness, herein subjects in New Jersey were interviewed to determine future actions they intend to follow, the actions they think agencies or others should be taking, and present a conceptual model for involvement of vulnerable community members in their own protection for future catastrophic events. The emphasis was on government and community actions. It is a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach to reduction of future risk. The case study involved subjects interviewed immediately following Sandy (general affected public; N?=?756) and 2–3?years after Sandy (vulnerable population, N?=?586). Concerns of subjects within 100?days related to friends family, safety and survival, food and water and medical concerns as well as recovery, repairs on their property, and community safety. Two to three years later, subjects remembered being significantly more concerned about family, friends, safety and survival, food and water and medical concerns than subjects interviewed within 100?days. Memories (or concern) also faded with respect to future preparedness; significantly more subjects interviewed 2–3?years after Sandy were going to do nothing, were less concerned about protecting family, community, and possessions than subjects interviewed within 100?days of Sandy. In contrast, the same percentage were going to evacuate and buy supplies, so it is not just a matter of forgetting the whole event. The data from open-ended questions indicated that subjects believed that recovery and preparation for a future severe storm event involved complicated and iterative activities of many different individuals, organizations, and governmental agencies. Thus we present an iterative, interactive model, and provide examples of how subjects viewed the interactions necessary to provide resiliency to their communities. We discuss the value-added of a bottoms-up approach to understanding risk reduction, preparedness and resiliency.     

Benefit-risk trade-offs in retrospect: how major stakeholders perceive the decision-making process in the Barents Sea oil field development

This study provides an analysis of risk-benefit communication and participation of the siting process for the Norwegian Goliat oil field development, within the context of a revised model of the International Risk Governance Council’s framework. The main objective of the study is a retrospective review of the decision-making process seen through the lenses of the major stakeholders involved in this process. The research design used qualitative methods of empirical research including stakeholder interviews during a five-day period in 2011 in Northern Norway. Results showed that the siting process of Goliat was dominated primarily by the issue of benefit sharing. In view of potential risks to such oil development, local stakeholders felt entitled to some compensation in terms of shared benefits. However, over the course of time the high hopes that these benefits would materialize and provide additional benefits to the communities which would then be fairly distributed among the beneficiaries have been disappointed. We review the reasons behind these results as well as formulate recommendations regarding potential improvements to the risk-benefit communication process in addition to future siting processes.     

Communities in a world of open systems

In the past, communities tended to be closed systems with relatively clear boundaries, stable memberships, and few linkages to other communities. We are now entering into an ‘age of open systems.' Mobility creates new communities and kinds of communities. The impacts of mobility are far less than those of information and communications technology. Cyberspace has become a new kind of social terrain, crowded with ‘virtual communities.' Television and radio create communities of people thinking and talking about the same things. Both mobility and the growth of communications networks reduce the predominance of geography as a force in shaping community. Many communities are much more fluid, and some are placeless. There are many different kinds of social groups and networks that people describe with the word ‘community.' Most people are multi-community individuals, with many memberships, and many kinds of memberships. Although the world's major religions still have some historic identification with specific regions, those geographic attachments are no longer as clear as they once were, and these religions are tending to become open systems. Some people prefer relatively closed social systems, while others flourish in freer environments. Choice is one of the most powerful forces in the lives of people being exposed to the forces of globalization. Community will continue to be a profound human need but will be redefined, perhaps many times over.     

Future visioning of local climate change: A framework for community engagement and planning with scenarios and visualisation

There is an urgent need for meaningful information and effective public processes at the local level to build awareness, capacity, and agency on climate change, and support planning and decision-making. This paper describes a conceptual framework to meet these requirements by generating alternative, coherent, holistic climate change scenarios and visualizations at the local scale, in collaboration with local stakeholders and scientists. The framework provides a template for a process to integrate emission scenarios with both mitigation and adaptation strategies, and to link local manifestations of impacts and responses with global climate change scenarios. The article outlines the empirical application of this framework in the Local Climate Change Visioning Project in British Columbia, Canada. The project collaboratively localized, spatialized, and visualized possible climate change effects and community responses in the community's ‘backyards’. The article concludes with lessons learned and suggested principles for future visioning efforts to engage communities in possible policy and behavioural choices.     

Internal and external analysis of community banks' performance

This study explores the efficiency of US community banks and factors that affect it. We present a slacks-based measure model for data envelopment analysis to analyze the efficiency of 3171 community banks in the US, and then conduct a panel data analysis to investigate the factors that affect banks' efficiency. The results show that bank size, community size, and unemployment rate of the region where the community bank is located are positively related to the efficiency, whereas relative affluence of a community has a negative relationship with the community bank efficiency. In addition, community banks providing real estate loans or diversifying their loan services perform better than those concentrating on agricultural loans, which account for a large proportion of the loans provided by US community banks whose traditional role is to provide banking services to rural communities and act as major credit providers for agricultural producers.     

Re-conceptualizing community in risk research

Community is an important concept for determining the factors that influence peoples’ perceptions of and actions surrounding risk. However, there are multiple and conflicting definitions for the concept of community and scholars operationalize it in various ways. In this paper, we argue for a renewed focus on community as a guiding consideration in discussions of risk management and the related concepts of resilience, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. We outline classic and current conceptions of community to articulate how its conceptualization in ongoing risk research might lead to different outcomes, foci, or recommendations about collective adaptation. This includes a discussion of how historic and emerging methodological approaches for studying risk make implicit choices about what community is or how it influences collective response. We close by providing a set of potential axioms that can help researchers better integrate the complexity of community into studies of risk and understand how populations respond to it. Better integrating community into studies of risk could promote policies and communication that are tailored to the unique local context of diverse populations. Such tailoring is more likely to promote adoption of risk mitigations among local populations and perpetuate adaptation as a part of local culture. We contend that a more holistic and systematic approach to documenting local context better encompasses the variable influences that community can have on collective ability to respond to risks.     

For the sake of serving the broader community: Sea piloting compared with auditing

Discussions concerning ethics and the auditing profession tend to end up in two different standpoints: create stronger regulations or increase individual morals. In this article we will argue for a third standpoint that emphasizes the importance of belonging to a community, to a broader society.The problem, as we see it, has to do with the separation of the aims of the auditing profession from those of the broader community that it is intended to serve. This is the result of the development of global auditing companies and standard-setting bodies that use bureaucratic control, regulatory frameworks, fragmentation and a codification of knowledge. Applying limited notions of community or virtue ethics on collectives like professions is of little help here since it tends to create self-justificatory professions disconnected from the broader society [Neu D, T’aerien R. Remembering the past: ethics and the Canadian Chartered Accounting profession, 1911–1925. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 2000;11(2):193–212].In our argumentation for a wider mission on serving the broader community we use the concepts “occupational community” and “organization” [van Maanen J, Barley SR. Occupational communities: cultures and controls in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior 1984;6:287–365] together with the term “for-the-sake-of”. Actions taken “for-the-sake-of” has a point or meaning that is wider than what is good for the individual or limited community. We compare the auditing profession with the traditional sea piloting profession in Sweden, which is characterized by a strong occupational community and members who strive to act “for-the-sake-of” serving the broader society by facilitating safe sea travel. We wind up by discussing the possibilities the state, market and community have in encouraging acts “for-the-sake-of” serving the broader community.     

商业健康保险推行社区健康保障服务模式可行性探讨

本文从分析社区医疗保障现状、其面对的主要问题及其主要原因出发,认为社区医疗体系的发展需要商业健康保险介入,并有针对性地分析了商业健康保险介入社区医疗体系发展的意义、保障模式选择、多方面作用和多角度可行性,详细阐述了商业健康保险介入社区医疗领域的主要思路。     

How Purchasing Decisions are Made in the Mixed Economy of Community Care

Under the 'Community Care' programme, English local authorities have become responsible for assessing the needs of those affected by problems associated with ageing, mental illness, learning difficulties or physical disability. They also have the responsibility of designing a suitable package of care for the individual, and for purchasing that care from a range of statutory, voluntary and private providers. This paper focuses on how purchasing decisions in community care are made. Concepts such as trust and reputation are found to be very important, and the paper therefore argues that the new economic sociology offers a more appropriate theoretical framework for examining the new market than the conventional neoclassical critique.     

Global controversies in local settings: anti-fracking activism in the era of Web 2.0

In this era of global challenges in energy policy, the importance of siting of facilities connected to development of energy system is greater than ever. At the same time, spreading of these facilities has often been controversial in surrounding communities. This article advances the debate on this phenomenon by focusing on an aspect of siting controversies that has become a game changer in recent years but has received remarkably little attention: the role of Web 2.0 in siting conflicts. To explore the impact of Web 2.0, the paper uses a case study approach, examining the influence of access to the Internet in two siting conflicts associated with shale gas prospecting in Poland in the period from 2012 to 2014. The possibilities that Web 2.0 offers to residents and other local actors in siting conflicts – access to knowledge, the ability to reframe the local debate using international resources, and mobilization of a network of support by sharing their version of the story – influence the dynamics of risk communication during siting controversies.     

Risk governance in an age of wicked problems: lessons from the European approach to indirect land-use change

In this article, the success of a risk communication programme conducted in two municipalities in Sweden is evaluated. The communication efforts were initiated in order to comply with the Seveso II Directive, passed as a national law in July 1999. Data from two different questionnaires are used. Between the distribution of the two questionnaires, an information campaign took place in the communities. The first questionnaire was aimed at measuring the public's opinion and understanding of the risks related to chemical industries in their communities, as well as the public's knowledge of emergency behaviour in the event of an accident. The second was aimed at measuring the effects or impact of the risk communication programme on the public. A total of 346 respondents participated in the study by answering two questionnaires. An evaluation of the risk communication efforts was focused around three dimensions: comprehension, audience evaluation and communication failures. The results showed differences between the two campaigns that gave significantly different results in the two communities. In the community with the multimedia channel campaign, the respondents showed greater knowledge of the production process at the local industry, they also judged the health threats for that industry to be less after the campaign, and they saved the information material to a greater extent. However, the overall effects of the information campaigns were weak. Future research is needed to explore the relation between people's emergency behaviour and risk communication.     

Scenarios in an organizational perspective

In everyday life there are many kinds of scenarios—those embracing society as a whole, and those limited to the local community centre. There is considerable variation in scenario subject matter, range, level and degree of detail.¹ Why have scenarios become so popular and which organizational arrangements have been created to design and implement this kind of policy-oriented futures research? This article looks at both elements of this question. It examines policy-oriented futures research in general, and scenarios as part of this type of research. It then discusses organizational structures for designing and applying scenarios. Following this, the strong and weak points of scenarios in policy formulation are explored and a number of conclusions are drawn.     

The Wider Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic on the NHS*

The coronavirus pandemic has had huge impacts on the National Health Service (NHS). Patients suffering from the illness have placed unprecedented demands on acute care, particularly on intensive care units (ICUs). This has led to an effort to dramatically increase the resources available to NHS hospitals in treating these patients, involving reorganisation of hospital facilities, redeployment of existing staff and a drive to bring in recently retired and newly graduated staff to fight the pandemic. These increases in demand and changes to supply have had large knock-on effects on the care provided to the wider population. This paper discusses likely implications for healthcare delivery in the short and medium term of the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, focusing primarily on the implications for non-coronavirus patients. Patterns of past care suggest those most likely to be affected by these disruptions will be older individuals and those living in more deprived areas, potentially exacerbating pre-existing health inequalities. Effects are likely to persist into the longer run, with particular challenges around recruitment and ongoing staff shortages.     

Communities as informal regulators: new arrangements in industrial pollution control in Viet Nam

A number of studies in developing countries show that in the absence of strict environmental regulation and strong enforcement, communities have emerged as a new informal regulators. In Viet Nam local communities in some cases are successful in forcing industrial polluters to reduce pollution or to change production processes into more environmentally sound directions. New subpolitical arrangements are formed, involving innovative relations between communities, industrial polluters and state authorities. However, people living in the neighbourhood of industrial firms are often dependent on firms and local authorities in terms of economic and social benefits, potentially inhibiting these processes of informal regulation by communities. This paper analyses if and to what extent economic and social dependencies of communities from industrial firms in their vicinity play a role in hampering community involvement in environmental regulation.