Practitioner perspectives on the barriers and constraints to the assessment of socio-economic impacts in EIA By

Previous studies have found the assessment of socio-economic impacts in EIA to be of poor quality and literature cites various reasons for this. However, socio-economic impacts can result from many types of development project and they are often interlinked with biophysical impacts making their proper assessment important. The barriers and constraints to their assessment are analysed, through a review of the literature, and a conceptual framework of hypotheses as to the reasons for their poor assessment is developed. The hypotheses are tested against the perspectives of EIA practitioners using questionnaires and interviews. Several issues were identified as inhibiting good practice socio-economic assessment, in particular, a lack of appropriate guidance, lack of capacity amongst the competent authority and a lack of experience amongst practitioners. Employing expert judgement to evaluate significance and the use of qualitative impact prediction methods were seen as appropriate tools for socio-economic assessment whilst training and a consensus regarding the types of impacts to include in an assessment were seen as important to increase its quality. The study concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for the future development of EIA practices and recognises opportunities for further research.