Influence of Stakeholder Identities on Unfairness Perception of Local Residents toward Public Facilities: Neurocognition Evidence from the Case of Waste-to-Energy Projects in China

Abstract

The consideration of the fairness to local communities in the development of public facilities is not only a moral imperative, but also essential for achieving social performance of projects. Despite acknowledging the importance of identity influence, existing literature remains a significant dearth in examining the influence of diverse stakeholders on local residents’ (un)fairness perceptions toward public projects, as well as an excessive reliance on self-reported methods. Therefore, this study adopted a judge-advisor-system to investigate neural and behavioral responses during the assessment of perceived unfairness caused by an assumptive newly planned waste-to-energy (WTE) project near communities of participants. Event-related potentials were measured, while participants judged the degree of two kinds of perceived unfairness (i.e., economy and health) under the influence of three stakeholders (i.e., governments, experts, and local residents). The neurocognitive results show that local individuals experienced negative emotions triggered by moral dilemmas of tradeoff between self- and other-interests when assessing both economic and health unfairness, with stronger ambivalence under economic conditions. Then, it is found that participants devoted more motivated cognitive effort into governments as authority to seek advice for addressing the dilemma in economic unfairness, yet, for treating health unfairness, they attached greater attention to both external experts as authority and local residents as ingroup members. This study contributes to the understanding of the emotions and cognitions of disadvantaged groups in the context of facilities, such as WTE, and opens a new avenue of research in infrastructure and stakeholder management to explore neurocognitive mechanisms of local residents’ unfairness perception under the influence of different stakeholders. The findings yield valuable inputs for developing socially and morally responsible policies and strategies that consider and respect the concerns of local communities in public projects by leveraging the power of identity-based group influence.