The impact of cognitive aversion toward mercury on public attitude toward the construction of mercury wastes landfill site

Abstract

Minamata convention on mercury requests mercury wastes landfilling in environmentally safe manners. Owing to great difficulties to form public acceptance of landfill site construction, this study focused on emotional appraisal to mercury. The author quantitatively evaluated cognitive aversions toward mercury and other harmful/hazard-like objects like dioxin using two types of pairwise comparison methods. The results of both methods showed good agreement. Mercury received the second strongest aversion, following radioactive wastes. Gender and age gave no significant impact on mercury aversion at 5% significance level. When perceived knowledge of mercury was neutral or positive, higher awareness resulted in stronger mercury aversion. In contrast, mercury aversion was almost constant regardless of negative level of the awareness. When the attitude toward construction of mercury waste landfill site was mitigated from rejection to neutral, mercury aversion decreased. On the other hand, mercury aversion increased when the attitude was shifted from neutral to acceptance. Rejection attitude might be affected by mercury aversion. In contrast, acceptance attitude was formed by rational consideration of mercury landfill necessity, not weak aversion. To design a supporting process for public acceptance formation, stronger mercury aversion perceived by both acceptance and rejection attitude persons should be concerned.