FREUDENBURG, Will Reassessment, Social S Extracted from PCY Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Copy’ ience Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) HOST COMMUNITY ATTITUDES TOWARD NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: A REASSESSMENT" William R. FREUDENBURG, Washington State University Rodney K. BAXTER, Washington State University Historically, nuclear power facilities have been popular in the specific “host” com- munities where they have been built. The Three Mile Island (TMI) accident may have ended that. No known pre-TMI host community survey showed more than 33 per- cent opposition; no known post-TM! survey has shown /ess than 50 percent opposi- tion. Pre/postM!I status explains over 70 percent of the variation across surveys— despite major variations in question wording, survey locations, and other factors. Several studies have now noted that nuclear power once enjoyed the support of a clear majority of U.S. citizens, but that it no longer does. The central finding of this paper is that even more localized support for the tech- nology is becoming difficult to find. Before the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in March 1979, relatively general or abstract questions on national surveys—eg., “Do you generally favor or oppose the construction of more nuclear plants?’—showed almost a 2-to-1 margin of favorability. In the first two years after the accident, the same question brought outa roughly even split between supporters and op- ponents of the technology. Opposition has continued to grow, since. late 1981, the same questions have shown majority opposition by about a 5-to-3 mar- gin (see Rankin, Nealey, and Melber, 1984; Freudenburg and Rosa, 1984a, 1984b; Office of Technology Assessment, 1984). When national samples have been asked about the construction of nuclear power plants near their own homes or communities, surveys have shown majority opposition to the fa- cilities since before TMI, and opposition has become even stronger since ' The authors are an Associate Professor and a Research Assistant, respectively, in the Department of Rural Sociology at Washington State University. They gratefully acknowledge the unusually helpful suggestions of Riley Dunlap and several anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft. This is a revised and shortened version of a paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, August 1983. It is Scientific Paper No. 6462, Research Project 0478, Agricultural Research Center, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4006. Editor's note: Reviewers were Jack N. Barkenbus, Fred Buttel, and Donald Vermeer. ht (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company (c) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress m R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: AFREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCI Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 1130 Social Science Quarterly the accident (Rankin et al., 1981; Rankin, Nealey, and Melber, 1984; Farhar- Pilgrim and Freudenburg, 1984). Historically, however, nuclear host communities—those communities in or near which new nuclear power facilities are planned or being constructed—have been far more favorable toward nuclear power develop- ment than have cross sections of the U.S. public. Such communities’ atti- tudes have an obvious relevance for the future of the nuclear option in the United States: Even if most of the people in the nation have strong objec- tions to having nuclear power facilities in their own backyards, such objec- tions can be overlooked if the facilities are planned for someone else's backyard, and if that “someone else” has little objection. Indeed, one of the proposals advanced soon after the Three Mile Island accident—taking note of the fact that the nuclear power option was in jeopardy because of a loss of public support—suggested that nuclear facilities would be more accept- able if they were confined to fewer sites (Burwell, Ohanian, and Weinberg, 1979). Newly emerging evidence strongly suggests, however, that even host com- munity support can no longer be taken for granted. This paper summarizes the known data, drawing attention to what appears to be a new phenome- non: clear majozity opposition in host communities since the Three Mile Is- land accident. PreTMI Attitudes of Nuclear Host Community Residents The best summary of existing studies of nuclear host communities is provided by Melber et al. (1977). They report the results from 31 pre-TMI sur- veys (at 11 individual reactor sites) that were all done after local residents became aware of the facilities, but before the facilities came on line. Respondents were interviewed in a variety of different ways, and there were substantial variations in the wording and focus of the actual questions asked. Despite the variations, however, the overall pattern is reasonably clear: The residents of the nuclear host communities tended to be quite favorable toward nuclear power. A crude indication of the overall pattern is all that is possible here, but opponents outnumbered supporters in only one of the 31 surveys (by a 32 percent to 22 percent margin, with 46 percent being indifferent or undecided). By simply adding together the results of all 31 surveys reported by Melber and her colleagues, we can compute that an unweighted “average” or mean of 57 percent of the respondents in the 31 surveys favored nuclear power, while about 18 percent opposed it. The “average” level of favorability is roughly similar to national levels of support for nuclear power plants “in general” before the Three Mile Island acciden:, but the level of opposition is lower. This suggests that, if there were differences between nuclear host communities and the general populace before Three Mile Island, the nuclear host communities may have been more favorable in their views toward nuclear facilities. This conclusion would be supported by a pair of surveys summarized by Rankin et al. (1981). The Louis Harris polls of April 1975 and July 1976 asked identical questions in nuclear host communities and in the general populace at the same points in time; Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress)FREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCT Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Host Community Attitudes Toward Nuclear Plants 1131 the pre-TMI “nuclear neighbors” in these surveys were indeed significantly more favorable toward nuclear power than were the samples of the general public (see also Peelle, 1982: Shields, Cowan, and Bjornstad, 1979; Sundstrom et al., 1977). Nuclear Host Communitiy Surveys since Three Mile Islana We are aware ©; surveys performed in five nuclear host communities since the TMI accident. Because the surveys differ in the extent of their geographic coverage, we will limit our discussion to the findings from the persons ineach study who lived closest to the nuclear facility in question, although in none of the studies did these persons differ significantly from those who lived some- what farther away. The first survey was done at the TMI site itself, only four months after the accident. Fortuitously, a team of social scientists had been studying the area at the time; they were able to field a study relatively quickly after the acci- dent, and their questionnaire included an item on the Three Mile Island fa- cility. 3espondents were asked, “Now!'dlike you to compare the advantages of having the TMI nuclear station in your area with the disadvantages.” Fifty percent of the respondents felt that the disadvantages were greater, while only 16 percent felt that the advantages were greater than the disadvantages (Flynn, 1979). The second postTMI poll in a nuclear host community was conducted at the other end of the continent a year later. A Washington State University research team performed the survey at a nuclear power site in Grays Har- bor County in July and August of 1980 (Wisniewski and Freudenburg, 1981). One of the items in this survey asked, “First of all. do you favor or oppose the construction of this nuclear power plant?” (The unoerlining was present in the original questionnaire.) Results showed that 65 pecent of the respon- dents opposed the plant, while only 22 percent were in favor, and 13 percent were neutral. The third survey was conducted in Trousdale County, Tennessee, the site of the Hartsville reactor, in October and November 1980. This survey was a reinterview of 213 out of the 288 area residents who had previously been interviewed in August 1375—at which time 69 percent of the survey respon- dents had provided affirmative answers to the question, “If it were up to you, would you permit construction of the TVA power plant near Hartsville?” (Sund- strom etal., 1977; Sundstrom et al., 1981; Hughey, 1980; Hughey et al., 1983). The 1980 resurvey found that only 45 percent of the respondents answered affirmatively (“probably yes” or “definitely yes”) to a question that asked, “Knowing what you know now, if it were up to you, wouid you allow construc- tion of the power plant near Hartsville?” A majority of the respondents in this follow-up survey (55 percent) answered “probably no” or “definitely no” (Hughey et al., 1983). Responses of “don't know” were not permitted in ei- ther survey; the difference between the two surveys is significant statisti- cally as well as substantively (t = 9.15; df = 211; p < .01). The fourth survey was conducted by Teichner Associates for the KABC television station in the area surrounding the Diablo Canyon nuclear power Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress)FREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCI Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 1132 Social Science Quarterly plant in late July and early August of 1981 (KABC-TV, 1981). One of the items in this survey asked about attitudes toward “the license and operation cf the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.” Within a 25-mile radius of the plant, 43 percent of the respondents favored the facility and 54 percent opposed it (there was no “neutral” category; 3 percent volunteered a “don’t know” response). The fifth and final postTMI survey in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear power construction site was conducted in May-June 1982 bya team headed by Stephen Cole of SUNY Stony Brook (Cole, 1984). Persons living near the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island were asked, “Do you think that LILCO [the Long Island Lighting Company] should complete and oper- ate the Shoreham nuclear power plant?” Within 10 miles of the plant, 52 percent of the respondents were opposed and only 37 percent were in favor, while 11 percent expressed no opinion. Analysis While all 36 of the known host community surveys have asked in one way or another about attitudes toward specific nuclear power facilities, the items have been worded ina variety of different ways, ana a broad range of polling organizations and methodologies have been involved. The surveys, moreo- ver, have been conducted in widely scattered communities, and during a period that covers more than 25 years. Given the usual influence of wording variations, community differences, and the many other factors that normally affect the actual percentage distribution of responses, it may thus be of par- ticular interest that 50 percent or more of the respondents in all five post- TMI surveys have opposed the local facilities, while the opposition levels never reached 33 percent or more in any of the pre-TMI surveys. With only five postTMI surveys, it is obviously too soon to identify any “direction” in post-TMI community attitudes, but it is possible to ask whether the apparent increase in opposition levels is statistically significant. Since the many variations in question wording, survey location, and so forth gener- ally appear to be reasonably random over time, we have subjected the results from the 36 surveys to regress! on analyses. So long as the various distur- bance factors are indeed random with respect to time, they will have no ef- fect upo” our results exceot to attenuate the statistical strength of the observed relationships and to iower the explained variance. Our regression analyses exclude the one factor that does not appear to have been random over time. Nuclear facilities were evidently less controver- sial in earlier years, as shown by the very high proportions of “neutral” responses (don't know/no opinion/undecided) in some of the earlier surveys. We have taken two steps to keep the “neutral” responses from distorting our results. One has been to eliminate the three surveys where the neutral responses were a plurality or majority of the responses offered (i.e., where there were literally more “neutral” persons than there were favorable or un- favorable ones). The other has been to use what Rankin et al. (1981) called the “index of acceptability” as our dependent variable. This index measures ht (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company (©) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress)FREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCI Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Host Community Attitudes Toward Nuclear Plants 1133 the favorability of those persons holding nonneutral positions, as computed by Percent favoring Percent favoring + percent opposing multipled by 100. This index has been regressed over time, as measured by the month of the survey in question. Astandard linear regression indicates a significant decline in support over time—a decline of 0.18 points per month—with an R? of .37 (9 = .0002). Avisual examination of the plot in Figure 1, however, reveals that the linear model overestimates the value of the index both for the earliest surveys and for the five post-TMI su~veys, while underestimating the later pre-TMI sur- veys, as might be expected from the foregoing discussion. The inclusion of a dummy variable for preTMI/postTMI status results in a marked improvement in fit. After the use of what Intriligator (1978) calls a “structural break” regression to control for the effects of TMI, the linear trend over time is no longer significant, although it still approaches sig- nificance (an average decline of .055 points per month, p = .09, largely be- cause of the high level of favorability in the very earliest surveys). The TMI dummy variable, however, is strongly significant (0 = .0001), and is as- sociated with a drop of 36.7 points in the index of acceptability. In addition, FIGURE 1 Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants over Time Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress)FREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCI Fulliext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 1134 Social Science Quarterly FIGURE 2 Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants ‘rae Before and after Three Mile Island ‘Tree Mile island + 1 + = Actual + i) @: —— = Predicted * 1 so 1 40- * |= o a + 20- 1 1 ‘TTT I ee uo gd 0 @ # © 8 MD 7 mM m, % RH vena “Cech” “"eSeticent” ° — = ee = = the R2 is more than doubled, with the revised equation explaining 75.4 percent of the variance, and with the increment to R2 being strongly significant as well (F = 48.0, p < .001, cf = 1, 31) according to the computational formula of Namboodiri, Carter, and Blalock (1975). Finally, a visual examination of the plot (Figure 2) no longer indicates any obvious pattern in the residuals. Discussion Regression analyses of pre-TMI host community surveys summarized by Melber et al. (1977) and of the five post-TM! surveys we have been able to locate provide strong if preliminary support for the hypothesis that host com- munity support for nuclear power facilities would cecline significantly in as- sociation with the accident. The results are particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that substantial variations exist in survey methodologies, com- munities selected for analysis, and so forth—and yet that a very siniple inodel explains 75 percent of the variance. Any remaining trends over time are ex- tremely weak, if indeed they can be considered statistically interpretable on the basis of currently available evidence. Since we are only aware of five postTM! host commun. since the five are quite different from one another, it is <* a si veys, and svo soon to Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of Texas at Austin (UTPress)FREUDENBURG, William R., Host Community Attitudes toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment, Social Science Quarterly, 65:4 (1984:Dec.) Extracted from PCY Fulltext, published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Host Community Attitudes Toward Nuclear Plants 1135, know what longer-term trends may emerge. Moreover, given the difficulty of locating surveys that have been done in individual communities, itis entirely possible that there are additional surveys in existence of which we are unaware. Tne presently available data, however, strongly suggest that anew situation has emerged since the Three Mile Island accident—a tendency for host communities to oppose the construction of new nuclear power facilities. The data :hus suggest that even the strategy of confining nuclear facilities to a limted number of communities (Burwell. Ohanian, and Weinberg, 1979) may now meet with significant opposition. Additional surveys are needed to assess the full extent of the increase opposition, but for the present it appears that an additional factor will need to be taken into consideration in deciding the future of the nuclear power option in the United States. SSQ REFERENCES Burwell, C.C., M. J. Ohanian, and A. M. Weinberg. 1979. “A Siting Policy for an Acceptable Nu- clear Future,” Science, 204 (8 June):1043-51 Cole, Stephen. 1984. Personal communication (telephone interview of 2 February 1964). Farhar-Pilgrim, Barbara, and William R. Freudenburg. 1984. “Nuclear Energy in Perspective: Comparative Assessment of the Public View.” in William R. Freudenburg and Eugene A. Rosa. eds. Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses? 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