SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Coastal zone takes up only 13% of China's total land area, yet contribute 60% of the national GDP. The Chinese coastal zone, especially urban areas, however, facing increasing environmental risk challenges. While the construction of large chemical plants in populous coastal cities continues unabated, urbanization has created severe environmental consequences along China’s coastline, such as red tide incidents and marine ecosystem degradation. Especially, residents’ reactions to potential environmental hazards of proposed chemical plants, waste pipes, and waste incinerators. These have presented the government with a particular challenge in coastal cities. Public response is therefore one major factor determining the success of chemical industrial policies. This paper aims to investigate how Chinese citizens perceive chemical industrial parks (CIP) policy in China, for what reasons they oppose it, and to what extent and for what reasons they accept it. Our focus is on citizens in three coastal cities - Dalian, Xiamen, and Maoming – where chemical industrial parks are located/ the government aims to install chemical industrial parks. Based on a face-to-face and online questionnaire survey in these three representative cities of Chinese CIP policy in coastal cities, we have examined the nature and level public acceptance towards chemical industrial parks. Results show that respondents were more positive towards national and future policy, but more negative of CIP policy at the city and project level. Public acceptance was significantly influenced by procedural fairness, distribution justice, side impacts and benefits of CIP, and the residential distance to a CIP. We advocate the consideration of public acceptance beyond single projects of industrial policy change, and argue for the relevance of examining the internal and external factors that underpin public responses and acceptance in addition to specific preferences.