The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development
Other Titles in This Series
What Happened to Fairbanks? The Effects of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline on the Community of Fairbanks, Alaska, Mim Dixon
Cultural Resources: Planning and Management, edited by Roy S. Dickens, Jr., and Carole E. Hill
Environmental Mediation: The Search for Consensus, edited by Laura M. Lake
The ELF Odyssey: National Security Versus Environmental Protection, Lowell L. Klessig and Victor L. Strite
Women and the Social Costs of Economic Development: Two Colorado Case Studies, Elizabeth Moen, Elise Boulding, Jane Lillydahl, and Risa Palm
Also of Interest
Strategies for Conducting Technology Assessments, Joe E. Armstrong with Willis W. Harman
Value Issues in Technology Assessment, Gordon A. Enk and William F. Hornick
Accident at Three Mile Island: The Human Dimensions, edited by David L. Sills, C. P. Wolf, and Vivien B. Shelanski
The Economic Value of the Quality of Life, Thomas M. Power
Available in hardcover and paperback.
Social Impact Assessment Series
C. P. Wolf, General Editor
The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development: Methods for Assessment
F. Larry Leistritz and Steven H. Murdock
Large-scale industrial and energy-development projects are profoundly affecting the social and economic climate of rural areas across the nation, creating a need for extensive planning information, both to prepare for the effects of such developments and to meet state and federal environmental impact assessment requirements. This book examines alternative methods of modeling the economic, demographic, public service, fiscal, and social impacts of major development projects. The authors provide a synthesis of the conceptual bases, estimation techniques, data requirements, and types of output available, focusing on models that address multiple impact dimensions and produce information at the county and subcounty levels. They also look at the kind of data each model produces in each impact category.
Dr. F. Larry Leistritz is professor of agricultural economics and director of sponsored programs at North Dakota State University. In a study begun in 1973, he conducted extensive research on economic and fiscal impacts of resource development projects. Dr. Steven H. Murdock is associate professor of rural sociology at Texas ASM University.
C. P. Wolf , general editor of the Social Impact Assessment Series, is research professor of social sciences at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He was previously associated with the Environmental Psychology Program at the City University of New York and was a AAAS congressional fellow in the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. Dr. Wolf also worked as a sociologist with the U.S. Army Engineer Institute for Water Resources and is the editor of Social Impact Assessment, a monthly professional newsletter.
The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development: Methods for Assessment
F. Larry Leistritz and Steven H. Murdock
First published 1981 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1981 Taylor & Francis
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Leistritz, F. Larry.
The socioeconomic impact of resource development.
(Social impact assessment series;no. 6)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Economic development--Social aspects. 2. Economic development
projects--Evaluation. I. Murdock, Steven H. II. Title. III. Series.
HD82.L344 338.9 81-2026
AACR2
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29585-1 (hbk)
TO OUR PARENTS
ELSIE M. AND KENNETH E. LEISTRITZ AND LOIS M. AND RAY H. MURDOCK
Large-scale resource and industrial developments are having profound effects on many rural areas across the nation. Increased energy resource development in many of the Western states; water developments in the Northwest and Southwest; and growth in rural manufacturing, particularly in the South, are only some of the types of development impacting rural areas. These developments may bring increased employment opportunities and renewed economic and demographic growth to the affected areas, but extensive planning information is required to prepare for these projects and to meet federal and state environmental impact assessment and siting requirements. As a result, decision makers in cooperation with social scientists are increasingly called upon to undertake assessments of the social, economic, demographic, public service, and fiscal changes resulting from resource developments.
Impact is often an ambiguous term, frequently with negative connotations, denoting change of some kind. For the purposes of this work, we define impact as the phenomenon of rapid change in established economic, demographic, and social structures, usually geographically localized, caused by large-scale, precipitous growth or decline in an area's economic base. While the impacts of large-scale development projects can be described in generic fashion, the nature of these effects also can be expected to differ substantially depending on the characteristics of the project and of the site area. Thus, the impact of a given project will differ depending on whether the site area is rural or urban, sparsely or densely populated, and whether its economic base is agricultural or industrial. The impacts of a project also are likely to be different for individual locales within the general area of project influence. These factors increase the complexity of impact assessment.
To make these assessments, a number of conceptual and methodological approaches of both a qualitative and quantitative nature have been developed. These methods range from relatively simple techniques for extrapolating various social and economic indicators, in which the interrelations between dimensions are only casually examined, to very complex computerized models in which model dimensions are systematically interrelated and integrated. Whatever their complexity, each of these methods represents an attempt to project the likely impacts of resource and industrial developments for such indicators of social and economic change as: business volume, income, employment, population, public service demands and service delivery, public costs and revenues, and community perceptions. The scope of such methods and their increasing complexity have placed increasing demands on decision and policy makers and social science analysts alike.
The demands on decision makers are extensive. If they desire to become familiar with socioeconomic impact assessment techniques to more effectively administer their programs and monitor the completion of impact assessments, they must be willing to undertake an extensive effort to master a broad base of information from such fields as demography, regional economics, sociology, and fiscal analysis. Because this information is found in a large number of individual sources which are often difficult to obtain and whose interpretation often requires a rather extensive background in a given subject matter area, decision makers face a formidable task. As a result, decision makers are often forced to rely on assessments that use methods and assumptions unfamiliar to them.
