地熱発電開発を巡る紛争の要因分析

抄録

Although Japan is very rich in geothermal resources, geothermal development has stagnated over the past decades. One of the reasons is objections raised by local residents, particularly by hot spring owners. The purpose of this study is to clarify some factors as well as processes that brought about conflicts over geothermal power developments. For this purpose, we analyzed five conflict cases and obtained the following results. While the majority of the dissident people were given information and went through experiences which could possibly affect their risk perception, they judged the projects unlikely to bring them any benefits. In addition, the local residents were not offered any opportunities to participate in the discussions in four of the cases. When some residents recognized the unexpected changes in the hot springs due to the development construction, they complained about the way the developers recognized and responded to the problem. For such reasons, the people concerned lost their sense of distributional fairness, procedural fairness, and confidence in developers. Therefore, residents formed negative schemata of geothermal development. Moreover, it is conceivable that the dissident residents formed anti-geothermal development groups within the hot spring guild in order to stop the projects in the key decision-making process.