FactorsAffecting The Violenceof NIMBY Movement

With the awakening of citizens’ environmental protection consciousness, the enhancement of democratic consciousness and the increased concern for their own rights, the NIMBY movement has appeared and been spreading gradually in China. NIMBY movements can be divided into two different categories according to their nature of violence.Inthe cases of Xiamen, Dalian and Shanghai, citizens engaging in the NIMBY movements adopted strategies of walking" or "shopping" to express their protests and appeals in a rational way; while in Shifang and Maoming, local protectors turned toviolence to oppose NIMBY facilities... ViolentNIMBY movement reflects the violent acts of irrational mass, the NIMBY related violent acts put great threats to social stability and economic development and also deepen the tension between government and citizens, eroding political trust and stability. In present China, which is increasingly troubled by the hidden danger of NIMBY facilities and frequent outbreak of NIMBY movement and reappearing NIMBY violence, it is important to explore the governance strategiesto NIMBY related violence, in order to prevent the NIMBY movement from transforming into violent ones.A basic question this thesis explores is why some NIMBY movements are accompanied by violence and some others not. The core of this thesis is to identify the factors affecting the violence degree of NIMBY movement, in other words, what are the factors that make some NIMBY movement end up in violent events. Based on this, this thesis adopts quantitative content analysisand conducts an empirical research, using SPSS20.0, to find the factors affecting the violence degree of NIMBY movement, and explore the governance strategies to manage violent NIMBY movement. This thesisdevelops a coding protocol and a coding schedule and assigns values to sample variables according to the coding protocol. The dependent variable is a dummy variable(violence or non-violence); the independent variables are publicity, appeal, communication strategy, information control, disposal method, coping strategy, group type, group size, protest type, mobilization, systematization, media coverage, report tendency and rumor. These independent variables are sorted into threecategories, the government related factors, the citizen related factors and the media related factors.After analyzing these factors by using the contingency table test, this thesis finds the factors affecting the violence of NIMBY movement. They are appeal, communication strategy, disposal method, coping strategy, group type, systematization, report tendency and rumor.Based on the research findings, the strategies the government can adopt include: openingways for citizens to appeal to the government and smoothing channels of opinion expressing; communicating actively and promotingproblem solving; keepingcalm and usinggovernmental force only selectively; respondingtimely to public opinion and making government’s decision as clearly as possible; increasingthe citizens’ perception and consciousness of law and democracy; negotiating with therepresentatives of masses and seeking breakthrough; strengthening the communication with the media and guiding public opinion correctly; promoting the supervision of the internet and dispelling rumors timely.