The place of attitudes and perceptions in social impact assessment

摘要

Sociopsychological variables, including attitudes, beliefs, values, and opinions, occupy a central place in emerging social impact assessment methodologies. Despite the attention that these perceptual concepts have received in the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) literature, there is little consensus on how they should be used. Four critical issues influence the utility of attitudes in the SIA process: (1) the location of attitudes in SIA research models, (2) the ubiquitous problem of attitude#x2010;behavior predictability, (3) the #x201C;other variables#x201D;; problem, and (4) the measurement problem, i.e., the importance of measurement validity, reliability, and scalability.