One more in my backyard? Insights from the 2011 Italian nuclear referendum

Giuseppe Pignataro and Giovanni Prarolo ()

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: This paper investigates the 2011 Italian referendum on nuclear power as a clean laboratory for recovering information on the spatial pattern of votes about the construction (or restoration) of nuclear facilities. Our results show that voting preferences on building nuclear facilities are sensible to proximity determined by a strong local component. Voters opposition to nuclear installments tends to be even higher when the effect of both existing and proposed plants is taken into account. The study tracks the changes of risk perception and voting preferences finding a positive correlation between the distance-related perceived nuclear risk and the share of participation against nuclear power. The perceived risk and the consequent voting pattern are even higher in communities close to proposed nuclear plants compared to the existing ones. This holds even after taking into account local, regional and political features and several municipality characteristics which may influence preferences over nuclear power.

JEL-codes: D72 H41 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4006/1/WP837.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp837

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().