Characterising Public Trade-Off Choices in the Context of Siting Hazardous Chemical Plant. P. T. Allen, Robens Institute, University of Surrey, UK
This paper is about the ways in which people make trade-offs in the context of a decision to site a hazardous chemical facility in their community. It is based on the findings from studies carried out in the UK and in Belgium which were funded by the European Commission under its third Framework progamme of research.
The main aim was to go beyond existing approaches which rely on cost benefit techniques and such notions as willingness to pay. One possible fault with the general approach so far has been the tendency to treat the 'public' merely as a source of market data. This has led to questions which have, as their main element, a value of life, or its equivalent in marginal risk reduction. A possible alternative approach is to view the public as in some way participants in a siting decision. A mechanism for the inclusion of a public voice would obviously be required to put such an idea into actual practice but, as a first step, it seemed valuable to e, e the usefulness and validity of obtaining value judgments which might be used in a quantified decision analysis.
It was assumed that contextual factors would be of some significance and that different groups or constituencies of interest would judge the issues in different ways. In this research it was assumed that most trade-off judgements would be subject to contend and interest group variation rather than one or two issues which sometimes appear to provide a focus for dispute. For these reasons it was decided to examine the effects associated with response in different locations and amongst different groups.
Samples
The results come from a number- of sample s conducted in the UK and in Belgium. In the UK respondents were five hundred and twenty seven members of the public and seventy seven planning offices. The planning officers were selected at random from local authorities in England. The public respondents were drawn at random from within a one mile radius of two sites in similar areas. The first was a controversial chemical installation covered by the Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards Regulations 1984 (CIMAH) . The controversial element was because there had been a fire at the plant two years previously. The second was a non-controversial CIMAH chemical installation. In addition a sample was drawn from a matched 'control site' where there was no CIMAH installation but which was generally similar to the other two areas.
In Belgium there were also four groups surveyed: people living within 5 kilometres of a chemical plant who had recently received information from their provincial government about the plant under the terms of the SEVESO directive of the European Union: another group living within 5 kilometres of a plant who had received such information some time in the past and not yet received a second wave of information: a control group taken from a similar area but where there was no hazardous plant; and a group of local politicians.
Conclusions
The results show that the sense which these different groups of people seem to be making of their situation extends to encompass most of the issues which might legitimately constitute decision attributes, at least in the context of siting a hazardous plant. Furthermore response to theimportant issue of cost versus safety was not an isolated value. This appears to be a reflection of differing philosophies with respect to Industrial development. The negotiation and re-negotiation of values through some legitimising procedure seems to be the only way forward in this most challenging field.