Effects of economic compensation on public acceptance of waste-to-energy incineration projects: an attribution theory perspective

Abstract

Economic compensation has been documented in many studies globally as an important strategy for enhancing acceptance by local residents of potentially hazardous facilities. Based on attribution theory, the present study investigates the situation for Waste-to-Energy (WTE) incineration plants using a questionnaire survey conducted with adjacent residents to four selected WTE incineration plants located in the Yangtze River Delta region, China. The results indicate that economic compensation effectively improves residents’ acceptance by being positively associated with their perceived economic benefit and trust in the local government, but is negatively associated with their perceived risks. Of these, trust plays the most vital role. The findings contribute to the literature on decision-making of locally unwanted land use siting in China by understanding the effects of economic compensation on local resident acceptance; and is of great significance for other countries involved in establishing sustainable municipal solid waste disposal systems of their own.

Keywords:

• waste-to-energy incineration
• economic compensation
• public acceptance
• attribution theory
• locally unwanted land use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No 71672180, 72072165 and 72001079), and the Fundamental Research Funds of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (Grant No 2019Q054).