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ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS, SOCIAL RESPONSES 95 The NIMBY concept It is well-known that people dislike hazardous or allegedly dangerous economic activity in their neighborhood or in close proximity to their homes. This is identified as the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon. Though as citizens, people agree in general that certain factories, power plants, military installations and landfills must be based in the country, they usually disagree with having them close to where they live. This is taken to the extreme when people explicitly question the legitimacy of a planned installation and reject it on principle. This might be labeled the BANANA attitude (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody). The NIMBY reaction may appear as individuals’ personal concern and personal risk which materializes in the forms of protest and rejection. Rejection channeled into collective action usually refuses compromises until eventually the investor moves out or offers compensation in due time and measure. The amount of compensation is generally calculated in terms of economics after input-profit analysis. Several factors are taken into account, such as the financial conditions of the development site, its natural endowments and infrastructural situation, and the living circumstances of the local population. Adding all this up, the investor offers realistic compensation, which he finds sufficient to eliminate the inhabitants’ presumed resistance. Michael O’Hare (1977) warns that the calculations do not lay as much emphasis on psychological effects as on financial solutions. Decisive elements can be the upgrading of the potential sacrality of the living space, the sense of the extended personal sphere which experiences the planned attempt at changing the environment as an intrusion into the intimate sphere, the enhancement of risk perceptions, the transformation of the local protest into an uprising, as well as defiance without any obvious reasons. O Hare focuses on how apparently rational individual actions turn into irrational collective action in which the different opinions do not converge as they are not formed along some collective interest, but instead coalesce into a lot of individual suggestions. The researcher calls this “the dilemma of collective captivity”. It means that an unwanted investment may be realized, despite rejection by 90% of those affected, when the remaining 10% manage to convince the majority with reference to the community’s interest. This applies even more when the minority includes the prominent figures of the settlement or neighborhood,or is supported by the local government. Main causes of the NIMBY behavior (Kraft—Clary 1991): — mistrust in the investing firm or its representative, — lack of information; signs of secret-mongering, — the advantages and potential negative consequences are not equilibrated, — proneness to conflict in local traditions, — negative memory of similar investments. To understand the NIMBY syndrome, it is worth considering Doug McAdam’s (1986) theory on movement extension and mobilization, which may shed light on collective action for environmental issues. The researcher differentiates low-risk and low-cost activism from high-risk activism, which costs time, money and sacrifice. The goals of the former are more general: it rejects hazardous, presumably environment-damaging future investments, e.g., siting a nuclear waste repository or a cement factory, etc., in a certain settlement, and tries to have this intention
