Effective urban nimby conflict management model from the perspective of public participation and government role

Abstract

Since NIMBY (not in my back yard) conflicts first appeared in the late 1960s in the United States, along with the civil rights movement, environmental protection, public administration reform, and urbanization and urban renewal in cities around the world, NIMBY has been a controversial issue in the field of urban governance. Although NIMBY conflict severely tests the sustainability management capacity of urban managers, few studies have explored effective urban NIMBY conflict management models in the policy process. This study aims to explore effective NIMBY conflict management model from the perspective of public participation and government role in the policy process. The research was conducted by using multiple case studies in Shanghai and Hong Kong to: (1) examine the major issues between the stakeholders in the NIMBY conflict management process; (2) investigate the impact of public participation and environmental information disclosure (EID) on the NIMBY conflict management process; (3) analyze the impact of government role in the NIMBY conflict management process; and (4) examine NIMBY conflict management model between local government and affected residents. Single-case and multiple-case studies are research methods in this thesis. Data were collected including in-depth and semi-structured interviews, materials from the interviewed residents, government documents, official websites, newspapers and the Internet. Qualitative data analysis including within-case analysis and cross-case analysis was used to analyze the collected data. The main findings of this study are as follows: (1) Public participation, EIA (environmental impact assessment), information disclosure, and the role of local government are the main issues between the stakeholders in the NIMBY conflict management process. (2) Public participation and EID have both positive and negative impacts on the NIMBY conflict management process. (3) The role of government has both positive and negative impacts on the NIMBY conflict management process. (4) This study confirms the consensus mode, compromise mode, policy failure mode and lose-lose mode of NIMBY conflict management. This study shows that higher effectiveness of the government role and higher effectiveness of public participation (including EID) is a recipe for reaching a consensus for NIMBY conflict management at the policy decision and implementation stages. Higher effectiveness of government role and lower effectiveness of public participation (including EID) could get a compromise for NIMBY conflict management at the policy decision and implementation stages. Lower effectiveness of government role and higher effectiveness of public participation could impact policy decision but get a policy failure outcome. Lower effectiveness of government role and lower effectiveness of public participation led to project delay or cancellation. The results indicate that a government-oriented management model could provide effective urban NIMBY conflict management in the policy process. This thesis contributes to the body of relevant knowledge by providing a government-oriented urban NIMBY conflict management model at the policy decision and implementation stages for sustainable development in China. In addition, based on the two-dimensional matrix of government role and public participation, this research has contributed to knowledge by providing a conceptual framework to evaluate and analyze NIMBY cases in other places of China and elsewhere.