Don’t Call Me NIMBY

With an ever-expanding stream of solid waste, and limited possibilities for disposal, communities increasingly have to make difficult decisions about where to store these by-products of daily living. The authors use survey data from seven counties in Florida that have recently dealt with solid waste location decisions to assess the extent to which citizen attitudes reflect a NIMBY perspective to these facilities. Contrary to what the NIMBY phenomena predicts, respondents who lived closer to existing or proposed facilities were not more likely to perceive them as dangerous as those living further away. In addition, the respondents were able to list problems and benefits to support their perceptions of danger posed by these facilities. These findings suggest that citizens do not always respond to environmental risks by gut reaction or without information as is sometimes suggested in the NIMBY literature.