Perceptive aversion to mercury in Japan - Part IV: A comparison between individual aversion and personal attitude toward landfill site construction for mercury wastes

<p>According to the effectuation of the Minamata Convention on mercury in 2017, environmentally safe disposal of unused mercury is requested. Mercury immobilization facilities and final disposal landfill sites are probably regarded NIMBY and it will be greatly difficult to build them for mercury management in terms of public acceptance. If Japanese citizens have a strongly negative perception to mercury, it makes mercury management, in particular mercury final disposal, more and more difficult. In this context, this study quantitatively measured perceptive aversion to mercury and then compared it with attitude toward landfill construction site for mercury wastes. When personal attitude was mitigated from rejection to neutral, individual aversion toward mercury decreased correspondingly. On the other hand, when the attitude was shifted from neutral to acceptance, aversion toward mercury increased. Persons who have acceptance attitude toward mercury landfill site perceived as strong aversion toward mercury as persons who has rejection attitude. Locational conditions like physical distance to landfill site did not affect the attitudes. Regardless of locational conditions, aversion toward mercury showed almost the same trends when the attitude toward landfill site was shifted from rejection to acceptance.</p>