Social acceptance and social license to operate
The concepts of a social license to operate and social acceptance for an industry or company and their activities have evolv ed both in a public context and in academic literature . Originally used within the mining industry , the concepts have also been studied within marine contexts (1), including aquaculture (e.g. 2-3) . M ethods have been developed to try to measure the level of social acceptance for an industry or company within local communities or for a wider population, and to understand what affects it (4-7).
Studies of mining have found empirical support for persons’ perceptions on the distributional justice , procedural fairness, and confidence in governance to significantly affect their trust and their level of social acceptance for an industry or company. However, f or aquaculture in Norway, these models have been found to explain the level of social acceptance to a lesser degree (8). Instead, the perceptions of the aquaculture industry’s environmental sustainability were found to be the most important factor determining the social acceptance level. Yet, t he perceptions on the distribution of benefits from aquaculture were found to be relatively important.
Perceptions and realities
It seems people’s perceptions to a large degree shape their social acceptance for aquaculture. To what degree people’s perceptions are shaped by actual impacts from aquaculture is however less clear. We will present data and statistics on the environmental and socio-economic impacts and conditions of aquaculture in Norway from previous studies and Norwegian datasets we have access to (9-11) . This will be combined with data on perceptions and social acceptance from a national survey for Norway (12) into preliminary analyses and hypotheses of how local “realities ” affect perceptions and social acceptance.
References