Penser l’acceptabilité sociale : au-delà de l’intérêt, les valeurs

• Main Author: Corinne Gendron
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université du Québec à Montréal 2014-02-01
• Series: Communiquer
• Subjects: social acceptability; participatory democracy; environmental controversies; social dimension of science; NIMBY syndrome
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/communiquer/584

Social acceptability reflects a collective judgment about a policy or a project which it is to understand the foundations and influences. If individual preferences may play a role in the formation of the collective judgment, social acceptability is more a matter of shared values and beliefs. Social acceptability refers to a collective assessment rather than individual positions, in the sense that the judgment of acceptability takes part of social dynamics likely to build and transform it. Moreover, this decision involves an element of comparison between the proposed project and its alternatives. Given those features, social acceptability can be defined as the consent of the population in a project or decision resulting from collective judgment that the project or decision is superior to known alternatives, including the status quo.