Residents' acceptance towards waste-to-energy facilities: formation, diffusion and policy implications

摘要

The opposition of residents near selected site has become a thorny problem that must be faced in the construction of waste-to-energy facilities. Different from previous studies, this paper proposes a cognition-emotion coupling framework to reveal residents' acceptance formation mechanism. Meanwhile, a comprehensive analysis method combining structural equation model and complex network dynamics is used to establish the acceptance diffusion model. Results show that risk, benefit, trust cognition and emotion have direct influence on the formation of residents' acceptance. Among them, emotion and risk cognition have a coupling effect, which provides a specific way to control residents' emotion for government through the path: Institutional mitigation-Risk cognition-Emotion. Furthermore, improving benefit cognition has the greatest effect on the dynamic spread of acceptance. However, it does not mean that the acceptance can be enhanced only by implementing subsidies, which can be demonstrated in simulation results. The effectiveness of subsidies has obvious lagging attribute, so in the initial stage of NIMBY control, taking institutional mitigation will be better than that of subsidies. Meanwhile, the combination of positive guidance strategies of community "opinion leaders" can significantly improve the effect of NIMBY control. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.