Living alongside hazardous factories: risk, choice and necessity

Abstract

A questionnaire survey conducted in Mardyck, a small town in northern France, surrounded by hazardous Seveso plants provided an opportunity to test various models which explained why individuals lived in these risk areas. In this article, we examine which of three different approaches: economic pressures and inequalities, biased risk perception, and ‘good reasons’ best explained individual decisions to live in this hazardous area. We found that none of these three approaches fully accounted for past and present decisions but the ‘good reasons’ approach enabled us to explore individual reasoning most effectively. While our findings indicated that individuals who live in the Mardyck area are subject to economic and social constraints as well as cognitive and cultural biases (distorting risk perception), they had made a conscious choice to move to and stay in Mardyck. They had ‘good reasons’ to live in Mardyck; they could afford to live in attractive area with good community facilities. Thus, their decisions were rational, albeit their rationality was bounded or restricted. Having made the decision, some residents dealt with the cognitive dissonance of living in a dangerous area by disregarding or denying the dangers, others, a worried minority, dealt with this same dissonance by highlighting their ‘good reasons’, that is, the ways the benefits of living in Mardyck outweighted the possibility of a catastrophic event.

Keywords:

• risk
• risk perception
• restricted rationality
• Seveso installations
• daily life in industrial area

Notes

^1. European directive on hazardous sites.

^2. Since this research, in the context of a reduction of overproduction of refineries in the Total group, this site was closed in 2009. The present project is to transform it into a site for petrochemical storage and training.

^3. CAP and BEP allow 15-year-olds who are not following a classic secondary education to gain a vocational qualification. The former provides, in 3 years, access to a particular trade, as a skilled worker or an employee. The latter, in 2 years, provides a more general training allowing the students who so desire to prepare a vocational diploma (also lasting 2 years).

^4. In their famous research in the outskirts of a large British town, Elias and Scotson (1994) showed that gossip was both a way to establish connections between inhabitants and a way to target deviants.

^5. Based on the types of capital according to P. Bourdieu (1984).

^6. Without being able to draw any conclusions, given the small number in the sample, it would seem that women are very highly represented in this worried minority.