environmental impact assessment framework by integrating scientific analysis and subjective...

C. C. ChenInt. J. Environ. Sci. Tech., 6 (4), 605-618, Autumn 2009ISSN: 1735-1472© IRSEN, CEERS, IAU

Received 21 June 2009; revised 27 July 2009; accepted 18 August 2009; available online 1 September 2009

*Corresponding Author Email: [email protected] Tel.\Fax: +5242 7112

Environmental impact assessment framework by integrating scientific analysis and subjective perception

*C. C. Chen

Graduate Institute of Environmental Management, Nan Hua University, 32, Chung Keng Li, Dalin, Chiayi 622, Taiwan

ABSTRACT: Environmental impact assessment is widely recognized as an effective tool for supporting the sustainabledevelopment of the environment through policy, plan and program decision-making processes. Traditional approach ofenvironmental impact assessment generally focuses on scientific analysis and neglects subjective utilities on the projectdevelopment. This paper proposes a framework of environmental impact assessment process by integrating subjectiveperception and scientific analysis. This framework suggests that environmental impacts and their consequent effects areanalyzed and calculated based on the inventory analysis, but the non-market loss arising from the construction of thesensitive facility is estimated by contingent valuation method and the relative importance of affecting groups inaffecting the ongoing of project development is evaluated by analytical hierarchy process. Eventually, a mathematicalmodel is presented to determine the optimal compensation amount under a targeted refusal rate. Also, a case example ispresented to illustrate this approach that integrates the objectively scientific assessment for potentially environmentalimpacts and individual subjective perception on the non-market value of environmental damages arising from the projectdevelopment.

Keywords: Analytical hierarchy process; Contingent valuation method; Environmental impact assessment; Logit model

INTRODUCTIONEnvironmental impact assessment (EIA) is widely

recognized as an effective tool for supporting thesustainable development of the environment throughpolicy, plan and program decision-making processesand accepted as an important decision support tool inplanning and decision-making processes ofenvironmental assessment. It aims to integrateenvironmental considerations along with social andeconomic considerations into proposed policies, plansand programs (PPPs) to achieve the overall objectiveof sustainability and the adaptation of human being tothe environment in the context of project design andsubsequent construction work on site. A great numberof literature focus on this issues (e.g. Noble, 2000;Partidario, 2000; Roudgarmi et al., 2008a) for thediscussion of methodology (e.g. Brown and Therivel,2000; Verheem and Tonk, 2000; Noble and Storey, 2001;Ramanathan, 2001; Roudgarmi et al., 2008b), orperformance criteria (e.g. Nitz and Brown, 2000; Fischer,2002) for performance evaluation.

The primary role of EIA is to provide acomprehensive assessment of the environmental

characteristics of PPPs, to enhance the environmentalawareness of management practices and eventually toachieve the goal of sustainability. It has been adoptedas a platform among stakeholders for informationcommunication about project developments so that thepotentially environmental damages can be avoided orminimized.

Traditional EIA planning process generally reflectsthe idealism of rationalism and characterize withscientific analysis and rational thinking. EIA assumesthat the provision of rational information throughscientific analysis and data collection will suffice toimprove decision-making (Kørnøv and Thissen, 2000;Rashidinejad et al., 2008). This approach is logical,consistent and systematic to provide a clear basis andjustification for decision making through thedevelopment of indicators to monitor specific aspectsof environmental status such as air quality, waterpollution and the change of landscape (Lawrence, 2000).It mostly employs a variety of technical qualitative andquantitative methods for assessor’s evaluation, ratingand decision on the impact of project developments,as well as its consequent effect. Some critics on thismethod have been presented (Burdge, 2003; Vanclay,

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2003). The major argument is that the rational processadopted in the EIA process should be implemented byhumans (scientists) and unfortunately scientists inreality are affected by their internal value inimplementing EIA. Lawrence (2000) provides somecritiques on traditional EIA, including “autocratictendencies, fails to consider resource and cognitivelimits, overestimates ability to predict and controlenvironment, insufficient consideration of extrarational(creativity), of synthesis (compared to analysis) andof nontechnical and nonscientific knowledge,experience and wisdom (scientific, technical, andquantitative bias), fails to adequately consider thecollective nature of planning and the central role ofdialogue, fails to consider inequities and the politicalnature of planning and fails to integrate substantiveissues”.

EIA in practice is conducted by a series ofprocedures through scientific analysis, data collectionand calculation. Currently, the assessment onenvironmental impact is conducted by calculatingenvironmental damages (category endpoints) in linkingwith environmental effects (impact categories) throughthe use of environmental indices that are based on theselection of a number of key parameters or weightingfactors. These factors are analyzed and determinedthrough scientific analysis in association with theimpact on ecosystems, resource consumptions,economic losses and human health and thus theseweighting factors in each environmental effect arepredetermined. The job of assessors is to aggregatethe data and form an overall index based on a database or an inventory. The relationship of environmentaleffects to environmental damage is assumed to bedeterministic in regardless of individual subjectiveperception on damages. The selection of impactcategories, category indicators and characterizationmodels, including the criteria for environmentalrelevance in general depends on a group of technicianswho focus on scientific analysis and ignoreindividualistic perception.

Such a quantitative method is easy to perceive andavoid misinterpretation, but it sometime loses the abilityto measure most social and economic impacts (e.g.,risk perception on health impacts, environmentalinequity, vulnerability and sustainability). Thesequantitative methods also have limitations inapplication due to the limitation and uncertainty ofhuman knowledge. For example, the interaction

between project construction and the environment isstill largely unknown. EIA still faces a lot of problemsdue to diverse perspectives, environmental values andnorms pertaining to stakeholders and uncertainty ofscience (Partidario, 1999; Tang et al., 2008) and thus itrequires a process of learning and negotiation amongmultiple actors.

As traditional EIA can not adequately address socialissues. Social impact assessment (SIA) emerges as aseparate tool from EIA and is adopted as a means ofaddressing social issues arising from developmentinitiatives (Gilpin, 1995). It aims to identify the intendedand unintended effects that arise from the projectdevelopment in order to develop sustainable policy,programs or projects (Burdge, 2003; Vanclay, 2003) andis practically seen as an integral part of EIA processand thus a stakeholder analysis should be conductedto identify the interests in the project (Connelly andRichardson, 2005, Rauschmayer and Risse, 2005). SIAprocess is viewed more as a critical socio-politicalprocess rather than a rational, analytic process anddevotes more effort to the resolution or avoidance tothe environmental conflicts and the development ofsocial and environmental justice and communityempowerment (Gagnon, 1993; Lawrence, 2000). Hence,SIA process must involve with public participation anddialogue that ranges from only informing the public toallowing the discourse in co-production (e.g. Healey,1997; Woltjer, 2000). These dialogues are central tosocial interactions (Ortolano, 1997; Lockie, 2001) inavoiding misinterpretation or adverse social andeconomic impacts and effective in reducing some socialand economic impacts to acceptable levels andenhances community benefits (Vanclay, 2002). Throughthe cooperation among stakeholders in the societyparticipation can develop more widely acceptablepolicies.

The traditional EIA approach has been conductedon the construction of sensitivity facilities in Taiwanfor more than two decades. The stakeholders, especiallythe neighboring residents, kept a continuousopposition to the operation of these facilities or plantseven though the information release claimed no harmsto the people or the environment. Therefore, an idealframework for environmental assessment is required inconsideration of the different parties involved in theproject development.

In this paper, a new framework for EIA is presentedby taking stakeholders’ opinions with scientific

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analysis. It attempts to provide a sound and practicalapproach by integrating subjective perception on thediverse, culturally-based values of a planned site withobjective data involving physical damages by meansof scientific analysis that are selected by most rational-thinking policy makers. After a theoretical frameworkis presented, a case study is conducted by applyingthe proposed framework as an assessing tool toevaluate the dollar amount of compensation and thetargeted refusal rate. The conceptual frameworkpresented in this paper is expected to be extended toapply and test on some project developments in thepractical world.

MATERIALS AND METHODSFirstly, the background of Taiwan’s EIA process and

the relevant aspects are discussed to gain somehighlights on the currently operating EIA system.Secondly, the contingent valuation method (CVM) isused to determine the weighting factors of each impacts(or effects) to balance the disutility of the sacrifice (theaffected people) and incorporate AHP to determine therelative importance of the affecting groups in affectingproject development. Based on the case of the projectfor the construction of a MSW incineration plant withcapacity of 600 ton/day at Wutuli, Linei Shiang, YunlinCounty (Linei Incinerator hereafter), an analysisexample is conducted.

Background of EIA process in TaiwanEnvironmental impact assessment act (EIAA) was

the first environmental law in Taiwan , legalized andstarted to implement in 1994. It is designed to call for acomprehensive assessment of environmentalconsequences, to prevent or mitigate the adverseenvironmental impacts that are caused bydevelopments, to regulate minimum requirements forensuring the achievement to meet the social objectivesand to prescribe the assessment procedures, thecomposition of assessors and the level of details ofthe outcome report to ensure information transparence.Although, Taiwan has implemented EIA for more than10 years, the environmental conflicts, however, stillmaintain at a quite high level. Nuisance petition caseshave gradually increased over time according to TaiwanEPA report (Fig. 1). The increase in nuisance petitioncases in Taiwan reflects that the slacks of the currentlyoperated EIA still exist. The practice of EIA remainsless than satisfaction and improvements in the qualityof EIA decisions are required (Curran et al., 1998; Hazelland Benevides, 2000).

On the other hand, the total cases applying for EIAranged from 77 cases in 2003 to 155 cases in 1999 andthe approval rate (including, conditional approval)ranged from the bottom of 57.83 % in 1996 to the peakof 81.65 % in 2001 after the implementation of EIAAstarting from December 1994. The cases requiring for

Fig. 1: Nuisance petition cases

Num

ber o

f pe

titio

n (

104 )

Year

1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 20068

9

10

11

12

13

14

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Environmental impact assessment framework

the Phase II EIAs drop sharply after 1998 and thendeclined to be lower than 2 % after 2002 (Table 1). Asimple statistical analysis is made and it is found thatnumber of nuisance petition cases is more or lesscorrelated with the acceptance rate of projectdevelopments (Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.469with p value of 0.145 for 11 observations). This resultshows that people perception on the environmentalpollution (measured in nuisance petition cases) has alarge gap with the outcome of EIA decisions. Thesegaps may be caused by the diverse environmentalconcerns on project developments among stakeholders(such as the authorities, local and affected people,environmental groups and others), arising fromsubjective perception. The current EIA procedureemployed by Taiwan is depicted in Fig. 2 in which theassessment process is categorized into two phase:Phase I assesses the potential impacts based on theenvironmental assessments (EAs) in which thepotentially environmental impacts are scientificallycalculated by project developers (PDs). EAs arepresented to and reviewed by EIAC that consists of 7governmental officials and 14 scholars/expertsappointed by Taiwan EPA. The meeting of EIAC inPhase I environmental impact assessments (EIAs)generates four outcomes, including approval,conditional approval, refusal and the requirement ofPhase II EIAs. If the project development requires phaseII EIAs, a preliminary environmental impact statement(PEIS) should be completed by the project developerbased on the detailed environmental survey and impactanalysis. Before the presentation of PEIS, Taiwan EPAwill invite stakeholders (the involving scholars, NGOs,the affected residents and the project developers) todefine the goals and the scopes that require for the

process of impact analysis and assessments accordingto Article 10 of EIAA. In the meantime, the feasiblealternatives, the impact items, the methods forsurveying, forecasting, analysis and the environmentalimpact assessment should be determined. Based onthe commonly accepted goals and scopes determinedby stakeholders, PEIS should contains at least: 1) thecurrent status of the site, 2) the possible impacts andits affected scope of development, 3) the forecast,analysis and assessment of environmental impacts, 4)the corresponding strategies to minimize the impacts,5) alternatives, 6) environmental management plans, 7)the responses to public opinions, 8) conclusions and9) costs for the implementation of environmentalmanagement and protection strategies. Agency ofIndustrial Development (AID) needs to call for a publichearing and make a filed investigation withstakeholders after reviewing PEIS. The public opinionwill be transferred to EIAC for further evaluation.Theoretically, EIAC is independently responsible forthe decision of acceptance of PEIS by subjectivelyallocating the weights among environmental effectsand eventually makes a decision whether to accept theproject development. If PEIS is approved, a detaileddesign and implementation of project should followand form a formal environmental impact statement,accompanied with an environmental protection planfor project construction according to the final EIAreport and review conclusions before the constructionwork starts. The environmental protection plan andthe relevant documents in association with EIAsshould be seen as a part of the engineering contractand all the relevant documents, including theenvironmental management plan and contract should

year Approveda second stage reject total cases Acceptance rate second stage rate 1996 96 55 15 166 0.578313 0.331325 1997 132 26 22 180 0.733333 0.144444 1998 127 10 22 159 0.798742 0.062893 1999 155 13 63 231 0.670996 0.056277 2000 114 10 43 167 0.682635 0.059880 2001 138 7 24 169 0.816568 0.041420 2002 86 2 23 111 0.774775 0.018018 2003 77 2 21 100 0.770000 0.020000 2004 108 2 18 128 0.843750 0.015625 2005 95 2 20 117 0.811966 0.017094 2006 85 1 21 107 0.794393 0.009346

Table 1: The cases of environmental assessment handled

a This column consists of cases that are approved or approved with conditionsSource: Taiwan EPA (2007)

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Int. J. Environ. Sci. Tech., 6 (4), 605-618, Autumn 2009

Fig. 2: EIA implementation procedures in Taiwan

Proposal for project development attached with EAsincluding background data and baseline description

- not approved- approved or with conditions

Phase I EIAs:Review of EAs and approval are made by

EIAC

1. Phase II EIAs are required to undergo2. The release of relevant information

involving with project developmentshould last for at least one month inorder to call for public opinions,conducted by PDs.

Goals and scopesare defined by EPA

together withstakeholders

- environmental survey- environmental impact inventory analysis and forecasting- environmental assessments and options selection

PEIS is presented by PDs

Field investigation andpublic hearing, conductedby agency for industrial

developments (AID)

FEIS and EMP arepresented by PDs

1. PEIS is reviewed by EIAC2. EIA Report

Acceptance of projectdevelopment by AID

1. Project implementation or stop2. follow-up

be submitted to the EPA before starting construction.

The proposed framework of EIAsIn practice, there is at present neither a consensus-

based approach nor a satisfactory method to guide theassignment of weightings for the assessment ofenvironmental impacts or the relative importance amongstakeholders in EIA process. In order to balance theweakness of subjective weighting or rating onenvironmental impacts, many mathematical methods arepresented. For example, analytic hierarchy process(AHP) has been employed for the use in calculatingweighting factors of each environmental effect in EIAthrough a multi-dimension process in consideration ofmultiple cr iter ia and multiple stakeholders byRamanathan (2001). He proposes that AHP can work

for capturing the perceptions of stakeholders on therelative severity of different socio-economic impacts.And thus it can help policy makers in prioritizing theirenvironmental management plan, and can also help inallocating the budget available for mitigating adversesocio-economic impacts. The application of AHP forsocio-economic impact assessment can help theauthorities to decide how well an environmentmanagement plan is appropriate for a projectdevelopment. Several shortcomings of AHP are alsoraised by Ramanathan (2001) and should be overcome,including 1) the measurement of scale, 2) the choice ofmethods for estimation of priorities, 3) the rank reversalphenomenon, 4) the lacking of axiomatic framework,and 5) the required number of judgments forcomparison among alternatives. Furthermore, AHP

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Fig. 3: The framework of Phase I EIAs

Step 1: scientific analysis on EIs Step 2: to categorize stakeholders

Step 3: CV survey on each stakeholderStep 5: to de termine stakeholder’s

relative importance of socialstatus in affecting projectdevelopment

Step 4: to estimate compensation for each stakeholder

Step 6: determination of refusal rate and dollar amount of compensation fora project development

neglects the relative importance of different stakeholderin affecting the political decision on the projectdevelopment. It also does not provide an objectivecriterion of acceptance (or refusal) and thus the finaldecision is made by the simple majority of EIA Council(EIAC) voting.

Some researchers emphasize to integrate theeconomic valuation of environmental goods or loss inEIA (Aunan et al., 2004; Mestl et al., 2005; Lindhjem,et al., 2007) for the comparison between environmentalprotection and social and economic development toachieve more efficient use of scarce resources (Arrowet al., 1996) and less impacts to human health andecosystem (Mestl et al., 2005). Lindhjem et al. (2007)argue that “economic analysis of mitigation measuresshould be conducted, as well as evaluation (not onlyanalysis and prediction) of impacts “(p. 3). McDanielsand Trousdale (2005) employ decision methods ofmulti-attribute analysis to evaluate non-market lossesdue to adverse impacts as a basis for determiningcompensation. Presently, the implementation of all PPPsin Taiwan should pass EIA process in which thestakeholder participation is allowed in the EIA practice.Stakeholders, however, play as a monitor or asupervisor to present different or even oppositeperspectives only. Eventually, whether to accept theproject development is still subject to the decision ofEIAC who are supposed to be rational thinking and innegligence of social impacts. In other words, theweights among environmental effects arisen fromproject development are subjectively determined by

the members of EIAC. In order to avoid the shortcomingof traditional EIA that has been discussed in theprevious section, this paper incorporates the affectedpeople’s perspectives in association with economicvaluation methods on environmental goods/bads intothe EIA framework. Lindhjem et al. (2007) argue thateconomic valuation methods have been applied toassess environmental impacts of projects and policiesin the practical world and shown to be beneficial tothe EIA process.

Methodologies for valuing environmental goodsare in general categorized into two broad categories:stated preferences by asking people directly to valuean object, for example, in a so-called contingentvaluation survey and to reveal their willingness to payor to accept for hypothetical environmental changes.On the other hand, revealed preferences is conductedby observing people acting in real-world settings andderived indirectly how people value different aspectsof the environment, for example, travel cost methodsand hedonic price methods. In this paper, CVM isadopted as a tool to evaluate the weights among theenvironmental impacts and the dollar amount ofcompensation for the acceptance of a projectdevelopment. The CVM is used not only for theevaluation of an environmental sensitive facility, butalso for damage assessment and the calculation ofcompensation payments in the practical world. A briefdiscussion for the application of CVM can be foundfrom a great number of literatures. Based on theprevious discussion, a framework shown in Fig. 3 to

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replace Phase I EIAs of Fig. 2 by incorporating CVM toestimate the dollar amount of compensation forsensitive facility and AHP to determine eachstakeholder’s relative importance of social status inaffecting project development. This framework involvessix steps as follows:

Step 1: Determination of attributes generatingnegative impacts

In practice, stakeholder cannot fully understand thewide impacts and high complexity of the projectdevelopment and thus EIAC should be responsible toidentify and pick up the possibly potential impactsbased on scientific analysis.

Step 2: Categorization of stakeholdersStakeholders with different environmental

perspective may choose different environmentalbehaviors toward a project of an environmentallysensitive facility or the conservation park forendangered specie (Chen and Huang, 2004). They mayprovide different valuations on the projectdevelopment and thus they may accept compensation,but require different amount or even hold a completelyopposite position to this project development. Theywill execute their political power in affecting the ongoingdirection and progress of project development.

Step 3: Conducting an environmental survey on eachgroup of stakeholders

In this step, the samples are drawn from each groupand asked how much they are willing to accept a dollaramount for the construction of an environmentallysensitive facility neighboring to their home.Theoretically, an individual will choose ‘yes’ to acceptthe project of an incineration plant when he feels y+w1 R + w2 H + w3 Q 0, where y representsmonetary compensation, R is economic loss, Hdenotes the health impact, Q is the impairment ofecological system, R , H, Q 0 and w1, w2, w3 arethe weight of each category of impacts, w1, w2, w3 0.Therefore, the following discrete outcomes of theresponse are observable:

,0,1

DQwHwRwy

QwHwRwy

321

321

In other words, the response is positive (D = 1) whenthe indirect utility for the construction of the project isequal or greater than the indirect utility without theconstruction, i.e:

Pr ( =1) = Pr (V (I + y + w1 R +w2 H + w3 Q| X, ) V(I | X, ))

Where, I is the disposable household income, X is avector of observed social demographic characteristics,V is indirect utility function and is a scalar variablerepresenting the disturbance of unobserved personalcharacteristics. It is assumed that the indirect utilityfunction V is monotone increasing for any fixed (X, ),then there exists an inverse function such that

I + y +w1 R +w2 H +w3 Q =(V (I +w1 R +w2 H +w3 Q | X, ) = (V1 ) (3)

and(V(I | X, )) = (V0 ) (4)

Substituting Eq. 4 and Eq. 5 into Eq. 3 yieldsPr (D=1) = Pr( y (V0 ) - w1 R -w2 H -w3 Q)

Stakeholder with different age, education, class andethnicity may express diverse trust on the sources andshows different environmental concerns. Hence, aweight evaluation conducted by stakeholders withdifferent demographical characteristics may generatecomplete different impacts. Traditionally, dichotomouschoice responses are regressed against a constant, thebid amount (BID), and a vector of socioeconomicvariables (X) using a logistic function. A logit model isemployed in this paper for computing the stakeholderacceptance rate of the project, and thus, the probabilityto accept the construction of the project is

Pr (D=1) = p = (5)

The logistic function Eq. 5 estimates the probabilitythat an individual is willing to accept the constructionof an environmentally sensitive facility under a givenamount of damages and a set of socioeconomiccharacteristics. It can be converted to

0+ 1 w1 R + 2w2 H

+ 3w3 Q + y y + ' X +

Where, ' is a transpose vector of coefficients for

),'321exp(1),'321exp(

XQwHwRwXQwHwRw

pp

1ln (6)

(1)

(2)


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demographical variables X, y is coefficient for dollaramount of WTA (willingness to accept) and 0, 1, 2,

3 are regressive coefficients. The estimated values ofw1, w2 and w3 are incorporated into Eq. 6 to calculatethe subjective aggregate damages of a project forassessor committee decision.

Step 4: Obtaining each group’s estimated resultsThe observed data of R , H , Q , y and X

responded by the members of group i of stakeholdersare used to estimate Eq. 6. The estimated results areobtained and expressed as follows:

Where, 0i is estimated intercept for ith stakeholder,1i is the estimated coefficient for 1 w1 for ith

stakeholder, 2i for 2w2, 3i for 3 w3, yi for y, and 'iB

for 'i .

Step 5: Determination of stakeholder’s relativeimportance vi among stakeholders in affecting theproject development by AHP

As EIA requires public supports and there is morethan one group of stakeholders who seek for theirinterests and concern on environmental impacts, thejudgmen t var iat ions on the impacts fromstakeholders should be considered. When thesupport from each group of stakeholders may affectthe implementation of project development, therelative importance among stakeholders in affectingproject development is needed to examine. In thispaper, it is sugessted to use AHP for performing theaggregation, including the geometric mean methodand arithmetic mean method (Saaty, 2000) todetermine stakeholder relative importance vi inaffecting project development. The characteristic ofAHP that using pairwise comparison includesfollowing properties, including: 1) Hierarchicrepresentation and decomposition, 2) prioritydiscr iminat ion and syn thesis, and 3) legalconsistency (Wang, 2004). In the AHP, the reciprocalmatrices of pairwise comparisons are constructed.Using these pairwise comparisons, the weight foreach attribute can be estimated. The details can befound in many textbooks.

i

ip

p1

ln = ia0 + ia1 R + ia2 H

+ i3 Q + yia y + 'iB X

Step 6: Determination of compensation amount (WTA)and refusal rateIt is assumed that the policy maker aims to minimizethe compensation y to obtain the refusal rate for eachgroup of stakeholder by establishing a target refusalrate q that is predetermined based on the past workingexperience and political consideration. Thus, theproblem is expressed asMin. y (P1)s.t.

The Largrange function of Problem (P1) is expressedas:

The first order conditions for the solution are obtainedby taking differentiation of Eq. 10.

for i= 1, 2, … , kThe optimal refusal rate qi for each group of

stakeholder and dollar amount of compensation y canbe obtained by the simultaneous Eqs 8 - 9 and 11 - 12.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThe project development of a MSW (municipal solid

waste) incineration plant has drawn great concernsfrom the public for its potential environmental impacts.In 1997, Taiwan EPA (Environmental ProtectionAdministration) planned to set up a MSW incinerationplant in Yunlin County. After a process, Linei Shiang (aplace in Yunlin County) was selected as the location

(1) i

iq

q1ln = ia0 + ia1 R + ia2 H +

i3 Q + yia y + 'iB X

for i = 1, 2, .. , k (2)

iiiq q

(8)

(9)

L = y + i

i (i

iq

q1ln - i0 - i1 iw1 R –

i2 iw2 H - i3 iw3 Q - yi y + 'i X )

+ q (i

iiq - q )

(10)

0 = y

L = 1 -

ii yi

0 = iq

L = - i (

iq11

+iq

1) + q iv

(11)

(12)

(7)


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Impact Category Description Water Quality Wastewater is recycled and reused completely. In case of emergent shutdown of operation, about 240

CMD (cubic meter per day) of treated wastewater is released to neighboring rivers, amounting to 0.023 % of river flow of 11.95 CMS (cubic meter per second). No contamination on the neighboring river can occur.

Air Quality The designed capacity of flue gas was 180 Nm3/h containing CO: 100 ppm; SO2: 80 ppm; NO2: 180 ppm; HCl: 40 ppm and TSP: 20 mg/Nm3 at the chimney. Maximum 24 h-observation value of emissions in the air measured at 2.5 km southern of the planned site are SO2: 7.35 ppb; NO2: 23.3 ppb; HCl: 1.18 ppb; TSP: 119 g/Nm3; Cd: 0.0021 g/Nm3 and

Hg: 0.0042 g/Nm3, 8-h observation value for CO is 715 ppb and monthly observation for Pb is

0.023 g/Nm3. All of these emissions are far below statutory standards.

Traffic, noise and vibration During the operation period, traffic frequency is about 320 trucks per day and max. 80 trucks per hour, leading to an increase of 2.9 % on the traffic loading of the neighboring traffic system. Noise level is kept below 50 db at a distance of 500 m far from the planed site.

Waste emissions Daily 120 ton of ash, mainly consisting of SiO2, CaO, Fe2O3, Al2O3, etc., is generated. The ash will be solidified and transferred to land filling site.

Animal and plant ecology All the pollutions emitted by this plant are far below the allowable concentration that may affect animal and plant ecology and thus their impacts are negligible. For example, SO2 emissions of 7.35 ppb is far below the allowable concentration of 0.3 ppm for animal health significantly for 12 months continuous observation, the allowable concentration of 0.5 ppm that may lead to urgent impacts and 0.18 ppm for plant for 8 h continuous exposure.

Recreation resource and amenity

The area of the planned site occupies 7.5 ha only and the building of this plant is designed to be compatible with the scenery. No historic relics or spots remain near the planned site. Noise level is controlled below 50 dB to minimize the impacts on recreation and amenity.

Socio-economic impacts About 47 employees are required to operate this plant and thus its impacts on labor market in this region are negligible. As the location of this plant is far from inhabitant area, its impacts on living life is negligible.

Table 2: The potential impacts after operation of this project

for this project. According to the design, burningtemperature was controlled at 850-950 ºC for 2 s toassure complete oxidation with energy recoverysystem and the flue gas was treated by scrubber,air-bag filter and other post treatments beforeemissions. This system was claimed to be capableof assuring to achieve the minimization of the dioxinemission below 0.1 ng/Nm3 and other pollutants(Table 2).

Taiwan EPA attempts to achieve that the projectshould conform to local and regional environmentalbaseline standards. The preliminary screening on theproposal presented decided that Phase 2 EIAs wererequired to undergo. The PEIS with the field surveyand public hearing minutes for the planned projectof Linei Incinerator were submitted to Taiwan EPAaccording to Article 13 of EIAA. The major potentialimpacts described in PEIS included 7 issues,

demonstra t ing to be l it t le or negl igible(Table 2). However, controversies involvingcontamination of water supply, site alternatives andpreservation of the blue-winged pitta were kept goingwithout solutions during the review process. Someenvironmental groups insisted on opposing thisproject and emphasized the negative impacts ofproject construction on the conservation of blue-winged pitta and on human health due to dioxinemissions. Even though, the PEIS for this projectwas approved by EIAC with some minutes ofrevisions according to the comments raised by EIACduring the process. The final report on PEIS specifiedthat this project was acceptable with the adoptionof a number of additional clauses.

The construction of this project started in 2002after tender opening and contract signing andcompleted in 2005 under the circumstance of the


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compensation. The answer of ‘yes’ represents thecompromise between the compensat ion andrespondent’s subjective perception on the value ofthe impacts generated by the project.

Step 4: The estimated models are obtained:

Where, p1 represent the acceptance rate of theenvironmentally sensitive facility by Group A and p2by Group B.

The empirical results are based on the responsesthat surveyed with students. Under this specification,there are two equations that may correspond to therespondent’s environmental perception on thisproject. The parameters of the two groups are listedin Table 3. The results show that the parameters forcompensation, health impacts and ecological impactsare significantly fitted to the model.

Step 5: The relative importance is vA = 0.204 andvB= 0.796 for the two groups, respectively accordingto the ATP procedures (Table 4). In the analytichierarchical process, it must firstly construct ahierarchy of relative importance in affecting from thepolicy maker’s view point that includes number ofmembers in each group and its power in affectingpublic opinion (Fig. 4). Based on the pairwisecomparison scale, a preference multiplicative matrixis built up. The weights of the two attributes arecalculated by finding the eigenvalues of the matrix.

Step 6: In this paper, the average distance ofrespondent’s home and the habitat of Blue-wingedpitta to the planned site are assumed to be the sameof 10 km. The household income is assumed to beNT$ 1,000,000 for group A and NT$ 800,000 for GroupB. In other words, H = 10, Q = 10 and I = 1,000,000are assumed in Eq. 13 and H = 10, Q = 10 and I=800,000 are used for Eq. 14. And thus, Eq. 13 and 14 aresimplified as:

continuously strong opposition of some localenvironmental groups and politicians. When Ms. Su,the leader of the opposite groups, was elected thecounty mayor of Yunlin in 2006, she immediatelyordered to stop the operation of the newly built plantas soon as she took office. Until now (2008), thisincinerating plant has not been re-considered foroperation. This paper follows the proposed frameworkdescribed in the previous section and conducts anexperimental design to determine the relativeimportance of diverse environmental impacts and thecompensation amount.

Step 1-3: Two classes of students are selected torepresent two different groups of stakeholdersthrough a purposive sampling. One is graduatestudents majored in environmental studies andbelieved to have more in-depth understanding on theenvironmental impacts of a development project whilethe other is graduate students.

They are asked how much of dollar amount theywill accept for the acceptance of such a project likeLinei Incinerator under a variety of hypotheticalconditions. The questionnaire consists of two parts:questions regarding the r esponden t’s socio-economic status and the relevant information(operating condi tion and emissions). Beforesurveying, the respondents are fully informed of thebackground of the case example. In other words, thebackground of the case example including, the dataof air pollutant emissions and possibly potentialimpacts of emissions from the operation of the plannedproject (listed in Table 2) is presented to respondentson surveying.

The distance of the planned si te to therespondent’s home is designed to reflect therespondent’s perception with health impacts H. Ina similar way, the distance of the planted site to thehabitat of Blue-winged pitta (Pitta brachyuraTemminck and Schlegel) is specified to reflect therespondent’s concern with the impairment ofecological system Q. The respondents are asked ifthey agree to accept the project (incineration plant)constructed about 1 km, 10 km, 50 km or 100 km farfrom their home or the habitat of Blue-winged pitta.The other impacts are captured by intercept of Eq. 6.The respondents are also asked how much he is willingto accept the construction of this project as

1

11

lnp

p = -3.1463 + 0.2831 H +0.0945 Q

– 7.6 x 10-7 I + 0.0016 y

2

21

lnp

p = -2.5168+ 0.198 H +0.0853 Q –

5.9 x 10-7 I + 0.0021 y

(13)

(14)

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C. C. Chen

Fig. 4: Hierarchical structure of stakeholder relative importance

Relative importance

Group size Opinion power

Group A Group B

Table 3: Estimates of parameters of the logistic regression model

CA CBObservations 32 34Constant -3.4163

(0.1438) -2.1568

(0.1713)I Household income

-7.6E-07 (0.6143)

-5.9E-07(0.7411)

H distance of the site to home

0.2831 (0.1358)

0.1980**(0.0324)

Q distance of site to the site of blue-winged pitta

0.0945** (0.0133)

0.0853**(0.0188)

y -9.3 E-04*

(0.0828) -0.0038**

(0.0267)-2Loglikelihood 27.507 30.448R^2 0.119 0.301

# p-value in parenthesis* significant at p < 0.1** significant at p < 0.05

Table 4: A hypothetical case for evaluating relative importance of stakeholders

Attributes Number of members

w1= 0.1

Power in affecting public opinion

w1= 0.9

Relative importance

v = iri iw

Group A 0.6 0.16 0.204 Group B 0.4 0.84 0.796

Table 5: The optimal compensation (dollar amount of WTA) vs. target refusal rate

q 5 % 10 % 15 % 20 % q1 (p1) 0.075 (0.925) 0.142 (0.858) 0.200 (0.800) 0.249 (0.751) q2 (p2) 0.039 (0.961) 0.086 (0.914) 0.137 (0.863) 0.186 (0.814) v1, v2 0.20, 0.80 0.20, 0.80 0.20, 0.80 0.20, 0.80

y NT$ 1,576 NT$ 1,207 NT$ 944 NT$ 785


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C. C. Chen

Using Eq. 15 and Eq. 16 and E. 11 and Eq. 12, theresults shown in Table 5 are achieved. Thecompensation amount is derived to be NT$ 785 to 1,576per year. It seems to be reasonable to reflect studentperception on the project development of anincineration plant. The example presented in this paperdrawn from actual cases occurred in Taiwan is toillustrate the approach proposed in this paper. Theresponders in this paper are selected purposely fromthe students in my school and hence the outcome inthe specific example presented here is hypothetical andfor reference. It reflects practice of the actual case basedon the framework presented in this paper. Thisapproach introduces CVM and AHP into EIA processto satisfy current laws and regulation, but moreimportantly to improve the information content ofenvironmental impact statements (EIS). The economicvaluation method of CVM clearly demonstrates theimportance of stakeholder’s participation that providesan important role in determining weighting factor, affectsthe calculation of aggregate environmental damagesand serves as a dominating role in affecting finaldecision of project development. It enables the finaldecisions of project approval meets both theprevention requirement of environmental impacts andthe perception of stakeholders.

CONCLUSIONThe decision on EIA process really involves a

variety of perspectives and decision tools. Within thiscontext, economists emphasize rational choice andgenerally suggest cost-benefit analysis to make goodenvironmental policy while behavior theorists take anopposite perspective and suggest that publicparticipation may help for the decision of a projectdevelopment. This paper integrates the twoperspectives and proposes a framework for EIA processin which scientists is responsible for the analysis andcalculation of physically environmental impacts andstakeholders weight subjectively the relativeimportance of these impacts. This framework considersstakeholder perspectives and attitudes toward the

facility construction, allowing them to express theirutility on the impacts of each impact. With theintegration between scientific analysis on the impactsand the weight determined by the subjective valuation,this approach is indeed able to achieve a surprisingresult that bridges the gap between scientific analysisand social valuation. This paper provides a newlydifferent approach and makes several contributions.First, a framework and set of applied procedures arepresented that integrate scientific analysis withsubjective perception on value loss due to projectdevelopment. The identification of potentially negativeimpacts is assessed by scientists based on scientificanalysis while the valuation of environmental impactsis conducted by CVM through the survey on diversestakeholders in the society. Stakeholder judgmentsabout the importance of different aspects of negativeimpacts due to project development are considered inthe EIA process to provide an aggregatecharacterization of the significance and implicit valueof these losses.

Secondly, the relative importance amongstakeholders reflecting their power in affecting projectdevelopment may play an essential role to achieve aneffective assessment and assure the successful ofproject implementation. The valuation on the relativeimportance of social status among stakeholders relieson a simplified version of AHP that serves as a basisfor analyzing complex value tradeoffs in a wide arrayof contexts to characterize the political importanceamong stakeholders in affecting the projectdevelopment. This approach does not rely on anindividual decision maker (or a social actor) but makesa tradeoff among stakeholders to characterize the valueof the losses.

The third contribution is to use compensation as atool for the possible risks across time and space for allthe stakeholders to reduce the opposition rate for theproject development. The framework proposed in thispaper provides an opportunity for compensation forthe wide array of non-market impacts from projectdevelopment and for promoting better communicationamong stakeholders and makes a trade off betweenrational thinking and psychologically subjectiveperception. Many important intangible values, suchas loss of historical sites, or loss of opportunities forcultural antiques that are meaningful to the affectedpeople, but are not obvious in contexts in the EIAprocess. The compensation mechanism works as a

1

11

lnp

p = -0.1303 + 0.0016 y

2

21

lnp

p = -0.1558 + 0.0021 y

(15)

(16)


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C. C. Chen

driving force for project developers to mitigate impactsand eventually it can and should be used to inform andshape future dialogue and negotiations betweenstakeholders and project developers.

Fourthly, this paper addresses not only onconceptual framework for EIA, but also the valuationmethods for environmental impacts and the relativeimportance of social status among stakeholders inaffecting project development to help policy making inEIA process. The presented framework provides thebasis for quantitative and qualitative analysis of theimpacts and further to linking of compensation andopposition rate, offer a comprehensive discussion tofacilitate review and allow the EPA to consider fullythe opinions of stakeholder involving the project. Ithighlights the usefulness of CVM and AHP in EIAs,but also reveals important methodological, practicaland institutional gaps and challenges to the wider useof EIA in Taiwan.

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AUTHOR (S) BIOSKETCHESChen, C. C., Ph.D., Processor, Graduate Institute of Environmental Management, Nan Hua University and Dean of Management Collegeof Nan Hua University, Taiwan. At Present, He is the founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Environment and Management.Email: [email protected]

How to cite this article: (Harvard style)Chen, C. C., (2009). Environmental impact assessment framework by integrating scientific analysis and subjective perception. Int. J.Environ. Sci. Tech., 6 (4), 605-618.

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