A comparative analysis of factors influencing the socioeconomic impacts of electric generating facilities

In recent years electric generating facility developments have become the foci of extensive controversy and resulting project delays, due in part to uncertainties and unknowns pertaining to a broad range of socioeconomic impacts which may occur. Unfortunately, socioeconomic impact research has not resolved many of these unknowns. Case study research findings have generally provided little new knowledge as to socioeeonomic impact dimensions and their causes. This paper attempts to avoid some shortcomings of prior research via a comparative analysis of some socioeconomic impact dimensions as they occurred in a sample of U.S. electric generating facilities. The paper focuses on an investigation of factors which may influence the extensiveness of developmentinduced local impacts. Both facility characteristics and characteristics of the locale which hosts facility development are suggested as possible impact determinants. Using correlational and regression procedures, expectations regarding the effects of facility size, construction time, distance to a metropolitan center, local population density and growth rates, and local labor force characteristics on overall “community service” impacts are examined. Results indicate both consistency and inconsistency with prior research conclusions, and suggest that some characteristics of the development and the development area are important in projecting the likely levels of some facility-induced socioeconomic impacts.