![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The application of the procedural justice theory is absent from our understanding of environmental policies, particularly in the process of nuclear policy decisions. We explore the relationship between citizen participation and policy acceptance of nuclear facilities by considering community conflict and governmental trustworthiness in the case of South Korea. This study used data collected from citizens who live in the areas where nuclear plants are situated. The results showed that citizen participation may be a predictor of enhanced governmental trustworthiness. Moreover, community members with higher levels of governmental trustworthiness are more likely to allow the construction of additional nuclear plants.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Citizen representatives are elected by residents in a community but are not politicians, elected officials, or members of the National Assembly. The role of the citizen representatives is to echo voices of community residents in the committee.
2. We have a concern about individual-level self-selection in which the results of the model may vary between cities with nuclear facilities and those without them. Busan, Ulsan, and Gyeongju already had the experience of accepting nuclear policies, whereas Yeongdeok was yet to construct additional nuclear facilities. We conducted a t-test to study differences between the two groups by including Yeongdeok in the sample. In addition, we ran an analysis of the SEM by separating the sample between cities with nuclear facilities (Busan, Ulsan, and Gyeongju) and a city without them (Yeongdeok). The results did not show any difference between the two groups. Our findings are presented in Appendix C.
3. Using the preferences for citizen participation, we ran the analysis again. On the basis of the AVE, which ranged from 0.36 to 0.50, there were no variations in the dependent and independent variables. The NFI and GIF scores were 0.87 and 0.89, and below 0.90, respectively. The model was not satisfied with the goodness-of-fit of SEM. Thus, we focus on the assessment of citizen participation, but not on participatory experiences in this study. We have included the results of the model in Appendix B. Future research should re-examine the effects of citizen participation experiences on policy acceptance through the use of another sample, dataset, or measure.
4. We also simplified the model without the direct relationships between community conflicts and policy acceptance and government trustworthiness and policy acceptance. The results show that as the mediator variables, community conflicts and government trustworthiness play a crucial role in connecting public participation and policy acceptance. We present the results in Appendix A.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jisoo Kim
Jisoo Kim is an associate research fellow in Korea Research Institute for Local administration. Her research interests are in conflict management, citizen participation, local autonomy, and deliberative democracy in policy process.
Junseop Shim
Junseop Shimis a professor of College of Public Service at Chung-Ang University in Korea. He received his Ph.D. degree from State University of New York at Albany in 2002. His works have been published in journals such as Policy Sciences, Public Performance & Management Review, and others. His research interests include policy frames, negotiation and conflict management, and energy policy.
Ji Hyung Park
Ji Hyung Park is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at Soongsil University, Seoul, South Korea, His research interests are in public budgeting and finance, and urban management, focusing on citizen participation, forms of government, fiscal health, performance budgeting, revenue diversification, and city-county consolidation.