Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Social impact assessment
Social impact assessment (SIA) seeks to assess whether a proposed development
alters quality of life and sense of well-being, and how well individuals, groups and
communities adapt to change caused by development (for an introduction and
bibliographies see Vanclay and Bronstein, 1995; Barrow, 1997:226–259). EIA and
SIA deal with opposite ends of the same spectrum and overlap (some also recognize
cultural impact assessment, concerned with effects on archaeological remains, holy
places, traditions, etc.). Freudenburg (1986:452) saw mainstream SIA as part social
science, part policy making, part environmental sociology. SIA often uses qualitative

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data and may deal with more intangibles than EIA, and consequently it has attracted
the criticism that it is ‘soft’ and imprecise. Yet qualitative data, provided they are
objectively gathered, can be as valuable as quantitative data for many purposes. Some
of the issues SIA deals with are difficult to quantify: for example, sense of belonging,
community cohesion (maintenance of functional and effective ties between a group),
lifestyle, feelings of security, local pride, perception of threats and opportunities.
However, these are things an environmental manager needs to know about.
According to Burdge and Vanclay (1996:59), social impacts are alterations in
the ways in which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet
their needs, and generally cope as members of a society (and involve lifestyle,
community cohesion, mental health, etc.); while cultural impacts involve changes to
the norms, values and beliefs of individuals that guide and rationalize their cognition
of themselves and their society. SIA and cultural impact assessment consider how a
proposed or actual activity affects way of life and attitudes. One may argue that
socioeconomic and biophysical aspects of the environment are so interconnected
that impact assessment should not treat them separately. This is not a universally
held view, and such a holistic total impact assessment is more of a goal than reality.
Yet often there is no distinct division between the EIA and SIA.
Social scientists and social historians were studying social impacts long before
EIA and SIA appeared, but the emphasis was almost always on retrospective analysis.
It is the focus on prediction, planning and decision making which separates SIA
from other fields of social research, which tend to concentrate on causal analysis.
The first use of the term ‘SIA’ was probably in 1973 in connection with the
impact of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline on the Inuit People (Burdge, 1994). In general
SIA has remained underfunded and neglected compared with EIA, although
attention in the USA increased following the CEQ’s 1978 requirement that NEPA
direct more attention to assessing socioeconomic as well as physical impacts.
Various disasters around the world prompted the demand for SIA. The Three Mile
Island incident (a US nuclear facility which suffered a near-meltdown that
necessitated evacuation of householders in 1983) is seen by many as a landmark
event because it was forced to use SIA to assess threats and public fears before re-
starting the reactor (Moss and Stills, 1981; Freudenburg, 1986:454; Llewellyn and
Freudenburg, 1989). The US Federal Highways Administration and the US Army
Corps of Engineers have been active in developing SIA (mainly in relation to road
developments); there has also been considerable activity in New Zealand from the
early 1970s—prompted by the Environmental Protection and Enhancement
Procedures (1973), the Town and Country Planning Act (1977) and the Resource
Management Bill (1989). New Zealand had a Social Impact Assessment Working
Group, established to develop and promote SIA by 1984 (and in 1990 an SIA
Association was formed). It is probably fair to say that up to the late 1980s there
had been less interest in SIA in Europe than the USA or Canada (for example, the
physical effects of the Chernobyl disaster received attention but, apart from health
impacts, the socioeconomic effects had much less).
Methods and techniques used by SIA originate from a wide range of disciplines:
social welfare, sociology, behavioural geography, social psychology, social

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anthropology, etc. This diversity, the complexity of SIA, and the relative lack of
funding, have resulted in its becoming less standardized than EIA and it has spread
more slowly.
In addition to claiming that it is imprecise, critics of SIA argue it is too
theoretical; too descriptive (rather than analytical and explanatory); weak at
prediction; ad hoc; mainly applied at the local scale; likely to delay development
(causing ‘paralysis by analysis’). Another criticism is that few of the theories it uses
are tightly defined so it is difficult to make comparisons between successive studies.
Nevertheless, Burdge and Vanclay (1996) were of the opinion that its definition and
process had been clarified, and that much progress had been made, although it needed
to be better integrated with the development process.
SIA can help ensure that projects, programmes and policies generate few or no
socioeconomic problems. SIA can guide the management of social change in advance
of the implementation of proposed developments, and has the potential to bring
together various disciplines and types of decision-maker (Soderstrom, 1981:v).
The socioeconomic component of the environment differs from the biophysical
in that it can react in anticipation of change; it can also be adapted if an adequate
planning process is in place. It is also different in that reactions can be more fickle,
because individuals or groups in a population are more often than not inconstant in
response. There may also be difference in timing as well as degree of impact on
various sections of society, some of which may be especially vulnerable. For example:
property owners will probably react differently from non-property owners. As with
EIA, different socioeconomic or sociocultural impacts may be generated at various
stages in a policy, programme or project cycle, for example: during construction,
when the facility is functioning, and after it is closed down—too narrow a temporal
focus and SIA may miss impacts (Gramling and Freudenburg, 1992). Spatially it is
also important to adopt a wide enough view, as social impacts may be felt at the
individual, family, community, regional, national, or international level (or more
than one level), not necessarily at the same time. Like EIA, SIA has been applied
more at project rather than programme, plan or policy level. The crucial thing is that
SIA, like EIA, should identify undesirable and irreversible impacts.
Methods used by SIA include: social surveys; questionnaires; interviews; use of
available statistics such as census data, nutritional status data, findings from public
hearings; operations research; systems analysis; social cost-benefit analysis; the Delphi
technique (see later); marketing and consumer information; field research by social
scientists, etc. Behavioural psychologists are often involved in SIA to ascertain things
like: likely reactions, whether stress has been or will be suffered, what constitutes a
sense of well-being, etc. The SIA equivalent of an EIA baseline study is the preparation
of a social profile to establish what might be changed and what would probably happen
if no development took place. Field research techniques can be divided into direct and
indirect. Direct observation of human behaviour may be open or discreet (an example
of the latter is the use of street videocameras), conducted during normal times or times
of stress. Indirect observation includes study of: changes in social indicators, patterns
of trampling, telephone enquiries directed at selected members of the public, historical
records, property prices, suicide rates, etc. Communities are a unit which can be

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monitored for changes using demographic, employment and human well-being data,
so SIA often adopts a community focus. Alternatively, especially when aid donors
commission an SIA, the focus is on target groups, typically the people(s) investment is
supposed to help. An issues-oriented approach is another possibility, or a regional
approach, or it is possible to make use of rapid rural appraisal and participatory rural
appraisal methods (Gow, 1990). Given the complexity of identifying and assessing
direct socioeconomic impacts, it is not surprising that much less progress has been
made with cumulative impact assessment than is the case with EIA.
There are many variables of interest to SIA, including:
♦
assessment of who benefits and who suffers—locals, region, developer, urban
elites, multinational company shareholders;
♦
assessment of the consequences of development actions on community
structure, institutions, infrastructure;
♦
prediction of changes in behaviour of the various groups in a society or societies
to be affected;
♦
prediction of changes in established social control mechanisms;
♦
prediction of alterations in behaviour, attitude, local norms and values, equity,
psychological environment, social processes, activities;
♦
assessment of demographic impacts;
♦
assessment of whether there will be reduced or enhanced employment and
other opportunities;
♦
prediction of alterations in mutual support patterns (coping strategies);
♦
assessment of mental and physical health impacts;
♦
gender impact assessment—a process which seeks to establish what effect
development will have on gender relations in society.
The quest for sustainable development involves trade-offs that have adverse
social and economic impacts, so it is desirable these are forecast and avoided. It is
also vital to assess whether there are any social institutions or movements which
could support or hinder sustainable development. Without supportive social
institutions, sustainable development will probably fail. SIA can help develop these
(Ruivenkamp, 1987; Hindmarsh, 1990).
Sometimes a multidisciplinary team deals with both EIA and SIA, or there
may be separate specialists, or SIA is a modest sub-component of EIA or
environmental auditing. Whichever is selected, SIA should be conducted by
competent, professional social scientists. SIA has been most applied to road
construction; boom towns; large projects; voluntary relocatees or refugees; and
tourism development. Environmental management should make more use of SIA
than is currently the case.