Shale Gas Development and Community Distress: Evidence from England.

This research examines psychosocial stress associated with shale gas development through the narratives of residents and the Revised Impact of Event Scale (IES-R). We carried out our research in three of England's communities impacted by shale gas development. To gather data, we conducted qualitative interviews and engaged in participant observation in all three communities and conducted a quantitative survey of residents. From our qualitative interviews it was apparent that the residents we spoke with experienced significant levels of stress associated with shale gas development in each community. Importantly, residents reported that stress was not only a reaction to development, but a consequence of interacting with industry and decision makers. Our quantitative findings suggest that a significant portion of residents 14.1% living near the shale gas sites reported high levels of stress (i.e., scoring 24 or more points) even while the mean IES-R score of residents living around the site is relatively low (i.e., 9.6; 95% CI 7.5-11.7). We conclude that the experiences, of the three English communities, reported in the qualitative interviews and quantitative survey are consistent with the reports of stress in the United States for those residents who live in shale gas communities. We therefore suggest that psychosocial stress is an important negative externality, which needs to be taken seriously by local planning officers and local planning committees when considering exploration and development permits for shale gas.

Mitigating Litigating: An Examination of Psychosocial Impacts of Compensation Processes Associated with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

During the past four decades, a number of social science scholars have conceptualized technological disasters as a social problem. More specifically, research in this arena has identified individual and collective stress as a secondary trauma of processes intended to provide compensation and economic relief from disasters in general and, more specifically, technological disasters. Based on data from a 2013 household telephone survey of 1,216 residents of coastal Alabama, this article examines the relationship between psychosocial stress and compensation processes related to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We examine involvement with claims, settlement, and litigation activities; vulnerability and exposure to the spill; ties to resources; resource loss and gain; perceptions of risk and recreancy; and intrusive stress and avoidance behaviors as measured by the impact of event scale. Regression analysis reveals that the strongest contributors to intrusive stress were being part of the compensation process, resource loss, concerns about air quality, and income. Although being involved with compensation processes was a significant predictor of avoidance behaviors, the strongest contributors to avoidance behaviors were resource loss, air quality concern, income, being male, minority status, and community attachment. Beliefs that the compensation process was as distressing as the oil spill also significantly contributed to intrusive stress and avoidance behaviors. This research represents a step toward filling a gap in empirical evidence regarding the extent to which protracted compensation processes exacerbate adverse psychosocial impacts of disasters and hinder community recovery.