Professor Okanga Boniface
Edinburgh Napier University-Scotland
Abstract
Using systematic review, this study evaluates how social impact assessment leverages the successful implementation of public projects. Despite the growing importance of social impact assessment, the study was motivated by the fact that most project implementation processes still continue to prioritize environmental impact assessment at the expense of social impact assessment. Yet failure to address social needs and concerns of the surrounding communities can breed outcomes that can not only delay, but also undermine the successful project implementation. To respond to such a gap by highlighting the values of social impact assessment, thematic analysis of about twenty studies conducted on social impact assessment and the reasons for failure of most public projects indicated social impact assessment to be part of the proactive project risk identification and mitigation strategies. Even for the pure business entities which are concerned with profit generation, social impact assessment is often part of the wider corporate social responsibility initiatives that the project contractors can use for promoting and marketing themselves as not only concerned about profit generation, but also the social wellbeing of the surrounding population. However, to achieve such positive outcomes, a general consensus from theories and literature suggests social impact assessment would require usage of ten main steps encompassing the development of an effective public plan, context analysis, initial screening, scooping, planning, baseline social impact assessment, impact prediction, analysis and assessment, mitigation planning, enhancing benefits and opportunities, and subsequently ongoing engagement and monitoring. Though usage of such a process can improve the effectiveness of social impact assessment, future studies must still explore factors that limit the effectiveness of social impact assessment.
Keywords: Social Impact Assessment; Project Implementation; Government Projects; Baseline Indicators; Process for Social Impact Assessment
INTRODUCTION
Social impact assessment is quite essential for enhancing the successful construction project’s implementation. It enables the evaluation of the social impact and benefits of the project. This aids identification and mitigation of risks that could arise to infuriate the dissatisfied local residents to riot, sabotage or engage in protest behaviours that can undermine the successful project implementation (van der Ploeg & Vanclay, 2017; Toms, 2024). Social impact assessment may not necessarily indicate undesirable negative social effects of the project, but also some positive social outcomes.
However, through social impact assessment, project managers are able to discern the undesirable and unintended negative social consequences of the project that must be mitigated to improve the project’s successful implementation. Social impact assessment connotes the systematic process of identifying social baseline indicators and using a combination of qualitative and quantitative assessment methodologies to evaluate and identify the undesirable social impacts that may arise from a particular project’s implementation (Arce-Gomez, Donovan & Bedggood, 2015).
Even if some of the projects are often accomplished without social impact assessment, it is still evident from various empirical studies that social impact assessment is quite important for enhancing the successful project implementation. It enables the identification of social issues that the project will have to deal with during the design and implementation of a more plausible project’s social impact management plan (Taylor & Mackay, 2016). Social impact assessment is the process of evaluating, assessing and managing the unintended and intended social consequences of a particular project’s implementation.
Just like Environmental Impact Assessment that highlights the potential ecological damage and risks that the construction project managers must deal with, social impact assessment is essential for project managers to discern the potential human rights violation risks that the project could invoke. It enables project managers and even government officials understand some of the social dynamics that may arise from the implementation of a particular construction project.
Such approach is in line with the Theory of Change as well as the Logic Model that holds that it is essential to follow a more systematic or sequential process for the implementation of development projects in order to not only realise new outcomes, but also to discern how certain inputs and activities are significantly related to certain outcomes(Arce-Gomez, Donovan & Bedggood, 2015).
Social impact assessment provides project managers with information on how the project must be modified, redesigned or even integrated with social impact management plan to effectively respond to the social needs and demands of the affected surrounding communities.
In the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions around the world, social impact assessment is increasingly becoming part of the requirements for approving a construction project. In effect, the International Association for Social Impact Assessment (2003) requires all Social Impact Assessment Practitioners to adhere to the fundamental principles of social impact assessment. Such principles emphasise the importance for human rights’ respect, equality and democratic principles during the design, planning and implementation of various construction projects.
Under the same principles, construction project managers are also expected to strive to create values for the greatest good of the surrounding communities and not just the project implementation agencies. Through the obtained report of social impact assessment, the National Highways-England’s Video on Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet Linkage Road, which is also known as A428 Black Cat Scheme suggests this implies project implementers are required to demonstrate the value of the project to the surrounding communities as well as to rethink on how the surrounding local communities can gain from the project.
Social impact assessment evaluates whether the community is being treated with respect and dignity (Taylor & Mackay, 2016). Unfortunately, even if that is the case, effective utilisation of social impact assessment in most of the project implementation process is still a challenge for the reason that there is complete lack of awareness. Problems of lack of awareness not only exist amongst the communities, but also among some project implementers. In most cases, environmentalists and activists as well as local communities have often raised certain complaints about some social issues that may arise from the project’s implementation to affect their overall wellbeing, but they have often been labelled as anti-development advocates.
In some of the cases, social concerns of the communities have been ignored by the government because in most of the developing countries, the importance of some major construction projects for creating employment and boosting economic growth and development is often considered to supersede the social concerns that some of the local communities are complaining about (Bice, 2020; Ehrlich, 2022). This leads to the situation where some of the projects get implemented without a critical analysis of their social impacts as well as how such social impacts can be mitigated only to turn into future disasters that affect the quality of life of the population in the surrounding areas.
The extent to which social impact assessment of construction projects is not taken seriously is also reflected in the tendency of the government as well as other stakeholders like banks and development partners only to request for Environmental Impact Assessment Report as part of the preconditions when evaluating licence or loan applications. This has affected the improvement of the effectiveness of social impact assessment as well as its inherent integration as part of the essential requirements for awarding building licence (Esteves et al., 2017).
Ignoring the social needs of the society during feasibility analysis often rebounds back to affect the successful project implementation in the form of riots and unrests from the local communities on how the project is or has affected social life in the surrounding areas. It can also rebound back in the form of local communities’ actions that sabotage or even vandalise the project’s construction materials and other equipment.
Failure to accommodate the report of social impact assessment can also easily rebound back to haunt the project in the form of negative political views, actions and campaigns against the existing government for failing to respond to the needs of the communities affected by the project. These can affect the successful project implementation (Taylor & Mackay, 2016). It is such challenges affecting social impact assessment that motivate this study to use the methodology described below to assess how the effectiveness of social impact assessment would influence the overall success of construction project’s implementation.
METHODOLOGY
Epistemological methodology for the study entailed the use of systematic review as one of the techniques for qualitative critical content analysis. Systematic review refers to the qualitative critical content analysis techniques that focus on evaluating the existing theories and literature with the motive of identifying and responding to the identified research gap(Seers, 2015). It is often used in the cases where enormous studies have been conducted on a particular topic.
It is such a reasoning that motivated its usage in this study for the reason that since an avalanche of studies have been conducted on social impact assessment and the social factors explaining the failure of most government projects, usage of systematic review would enable the study discern how social impact assessment influences the success of construction projects’ implementation.
To accomplish that, the process of systematic review was structured according to four steps encompassing the formulation of the systematic review questions, literature search, literature extraction and analysis(Bearman & Dawson, 2013). In the quests of probing how social impact assessment influences the successful implementation of construction projects, systematic review probed two questions requiring the analysis of:
- How does social impact assessment influence the successful implementation of construction projects?
- What are often the major social limitations affecting the successful implementation of construction projects?
In addition to using such questions to search and extract the required relevant literature, the systematic review process used keywords and phrases like “Social Impact Assessment”, “Project Implementation”, “Government Projects”, “Baseline Indicators”, “Process for Social Impact Assessment”, “Values of Social Impact Assessment during Project Implementation”, “Limitations of Social Impact Assessment during Project Implementation” and “Social Factors explaining Failure of Construction Projects.” In that process, only articles which had full texts and are published in English in the period between 2015 and 2024 were extracted and included in the study.
To extract and integrate articles in the study, each of the articles was first read to ensure that it examined the concepts that were relevant for enhancing the understanding of how social impact assessment influences the successful project implementation as well as the consequences of not undertaking social impact assessment (Froud, Patterson & Eldridge, 2014). After the extraction of about twenty articles, each of the twenty articles was subjected to thematic analysis and the details of the findings are as presented below.
SYSTEMATIC SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Systematic literature review indicated the critical techniques for social impact analysis to encompass the use of:
- Social Return on Investment (SROI)
- Social Impact Evaluation
- Outcome Mapping
- Social Accounting and Audit
- Participatory Approaches.
To mitigate the over-reliance on pure return on investment that only focuses on evaluating the financial outcomes, Social Return on Investment (SROI) deals with the analysis and attaching of monetary value to different identified social variables identified during social impact assessment (Esteves et al., 2017).
Social Impact Evaluation assesses the causal effects of an intervention on certain social outcomes, as outcome mapping links and tracks the behaviour and relationships between certain interventions and some outcomes for a particular period in order to confirm that a particular outcome is induced by certain observed behaviour or actions.
Social accounting and auditing is the evaluation of whether the project being implemented has put in place all the necessary mechanisms for identifying and mitigating any potential undesirable social impacts that may arise from the accomplishment of the project (Taylor & Mackay, 2016).
Participatory approaches require consultation, engagement and involvement of the local communities and stakeholders in the monitoring and evaluation of the social impacts of the project being implemented. Since communities understand their needs and areas better, such collaborative approach is essential for enabling the process of social impact assessment emerge with insights that improve the overall efficacy of social impact management plan that will be put in place(Taylor & Mackay, 2016). But even if different social impact assessment approaches are used in different situations, there is still implicit consensus in theories and literature that social impact assessment is a systematic process that requires the evaluation and identification of the undesirable social impacts of the project according to three steps encompassing:
- Preliminary Assessment
- Social Impact Assessment
- Analysis, Reporting and Formulation of Social Impact Management Plan
Details of these are evaluated as follows.
Stage 1: Preliminary Assessment
Preliminary assessment is the early stage of the process for social impact assessment. It entails the analysis of the overview of the project as to what it will entail, the key deliverables and where the project will be implemented. As reflected in the Unthinkable Build’s Video below, it is through preliminary analysis that social impact assessment practitioners are able to establish baseline indicators which can be used for measuring the social impact of the project (Glasson & Therivel, 2019). Silvertown Tunnel is one of the major ongoing road infrastructure construction projects in the United Kingdom. Using the tunnel that will pass under River Thames, it aims to improve the speed of traffic flow in London. As it aspires to achieve that, the likely social impacts of Silvertown Tunnel will be reflected in the improved linkage and social connectivity of the residents in Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Docks in East London.
From Silvertown Tunnel project, it is evident that if it’s a road construction project, preliminary analysis aims to assess the maps and the sketch reflecting the areas where the project will pass through so as to identify the communities that will be affected. Preliminary analysis is the process of assessing how the project will affect the surrounding communities like in terms of the disrupted spiritual sites, places of worship, schools, churches, gardens, swamps and forests used by the surrounding local communities as the source of firewood and traditional health drugs. Preliminary analysis also seeks to factor in the kinds of problems that could arise from the changes in migration patterns (Taylor & Mackay, 2016).
In case, a sewage or waste dumping site is to be established in the nearby locations, most of the surrounding communities who may not be able to validate their complaints for compensation and relocation may opt to migrate away from the area. Usually this may not arise from the direct effects of the sewage or the dumping site, but because the trucks moving wastes may be the source of inconvenience and health risks. Such risks may arise from probabilities of accidents affecting children playing on the road or the smell arising from the moving waste trucks (Mackay & Taylor, 2024).
In contrast, the establishment of a major road or a shopping mall could instead attract more new immigrants from the other parts of the region or the country. This contributes to the increment of the population that may instead improve or affect the wellbeing of the surrounding areas in terms of the rise in crime rate, prostitution that may affect the morality of the place and congestion that affects the standard, condition and quality of living.
It is also through preliminary assessment that social evaluators are able to identify and interact with all the stakeholders and the surrounding communities to discern how their human rights will be or could have been affected by the project (Smyth & Vanclay, 2017). It enables them identify local communities who are still complaining about being forcefully removed from their traditional land without compensation or having been paid compensation without getting the money from government due to corruption. It also assesses whether there is any discrimination in the process of project implementation in terms of employing the surrounding population of different ethnic origins or if there is unfair treatment in terms of remuneration paid to the surrounding communities who are engaged as the causal or even formal workers of the project (Hanna et al., 2016).
Preliminary analysis also evaluates whether project implementers have adopted local procurement strategies to buy things like food for the project workers from the local communities. It will also assess whether things like contracts for providing accommodation for the project workers have also been availed to the local workers. After completion of preliminary assessment informing baseline indicators that will be used in the analysis, the next step deals with the actual accomplishment of social impact assessment.
Stage 2: Social Impact Assessment
Social impact assessment is the actual systematic process of gathering and analysing data on the social impact of the construction project being implemented or that will be implemented. In addition to liaising with relevant stakeholders to enhance the transparency of the project, the actual process of social impact assessment may also require the use of qualitative and quantitative social impact assessment methods (Esteves et al., 2017). The methods for qualitative social impact assessment may require the use of case studies, observation, interviews, focus group discussions, qualitative Delphi Methods and qualitative critical content analysis.
Given technological advancement, this may be accompanied with the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to gather unsolicited insights and comments about the project’s implementation from different social media platforms like twitter, facebook and linkedin.
Quantitative social impact assessment often requires the use of methods like experimentation, case studies, surveys, quantitative Delphi Method and social experimentation (Glasson & Therivel, 2019). Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative social impact assessments or just one of the methods, the process of social impact assessment can be accomplished at three different stages that include:
- Before Project Execution: Before the actual commencement of project implementation to identify the critical indicators and baseline variables that must be considered as part of the social impacts of the project to watch(Kahangirwe & Vanclay, 2022).
- During Project Execution: To assess the changes in baseline variables or new variables which have emerged to undermine the successful accomplishment of the project. During the actual project implementation, social impact assessment aids the identification of some social challenges that affect the successful project implementation. This is because it is not easy to predict and include all variables in baseline indicators before the actual implementation of the project commences(Smyth et al., 2015).
- After Project Execution: If some of the social effects of the construction project cannot easily be identified before and during project execution, they can easily arise after the completion of the project. New social impacts may emerge after the completion of the project or the completion of the project may reveal some of the significant changes in baseline variables. Baseline variables could have been designed to reveal only some minor social challenges that may arise from the project’s implementation. But after the completion of the project, it can be discerned that the previously identified minor variable has turned into the worst state to require a new form of social impact assessment management plan (Smyth & Vanclay, 2017).
It is through the use of these three stages of social impact analysis that project managers are able to discern how the project will be affected by the introduction of new systems and structures in the area (Taylor & Mackay, 2016). If it is a building structure for a mega shopping mall that will take long to complete, social impact assessment will require the analysis of whether as the project stays idle for some time to comply with the engineering prescriptions of leaving the walls or the floors to dry completely before moving to the next action, the uncompleted building structure will not be used by criminals for hiding to attack moving pedestrians or even motorists at night.
It will also require social impact assessment to assess whether the building will not be used by prostitutes at night or even day time to affect the morality of the place or even cause the increasing spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (Taylor & Mackay, 2016).
If it’s a tunnel being dug for a bridge, sewage or road construction, the actual impact assessment of the project will have to evaluate whether the project will affect the freedom of the surrounding communities’ ability to enjoy life by avoiding to drink and walk back home at night for fear of accidentally falling and breaking their legs in the dug trenches. In that process, social impact analysis will have to evaluate how the project integrates cultural adaptation, social inclusion, land resource management and periodic social impact analysis to enhance the modifications or change of social impact assessment (Karami et al., 2017).
It also explores whether the surrounding communities are effectively being consulted, engaged and involved in the implementation of different projects. Such analysis also often extends to the evaluation of the effectiveness of stakeholder management approach adopted by project implementers to minimise risks of the emerging social conflicts and mistrusts amongst the population. Unfortunately, as reflected in ABC News’ Video on Melbourne’s Victoria West Gate Tunnel Project in Australia, lack of transparency and political interference may not only affect stakeholder consultation, but also a critical analysis of the social impact of the project on the surrounding communities.
Using statistical probability, the process of social impact assessment must be able to assess the likelihood of the risks occurring as well as the consequences of the risk if it occurs and for how long will the surrounding local communities be affected by the stated risks (Lee et al., 2020). It will also assess whether the negative social impact of the project is permanent and irreversible or just temporary.
This must also be accompanied with the analysis of the number of the surrounding households and properties as well as human settlements that will be affected. The vulnerability and capacity of the local communities to mitigate the undesirable negative social impacts of the project must also be evaluated (Moreira, Vanclay & Esteves, 2022). This leads to the assessment of whether or not the project implementation contractors have a comprehensive social impact management plan in place.
Though completion of the actual social impact assessment must be accompanied with the update of the baseline indicators to identify new indicators that must be observed, the next stage of the systematic social impact assessment process often leads to the execution of the activities in the next stage that involve reporting and formulation of the social impact management plan(Hanna et al., 2016).
Stage 3: Analysis, Reporting and Formulation of the Social Impact Management Plan
This stage involves the analysis and reporting of the findings that inform the final impact assessment that must be put in place to enhance the effective management of the undesirable social impacts of the project (Mottee, 2022). Analysis deals with the evaluation of the collected data to discern the patterns of the trends in the relationship of different tested variables as well as the adopted interventions and the observed outcomes. But still, the analysis techniques to be used depend on whether the collected data is qualitative or quantitative(Esteves, 2021; Okanga & Drotskie, 2015). If the data is qualitative, the qualitative data analysis that will be used encompass thematic analysis, discourse analysis or narrative analysis.
For quantitative social impact assessment data, the analysis techniques would require the use of multivariate analysis, exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis, Pearson co-relational analysis, ANOVA and Chi-Squared Statistics (Mackay & Taylor, 2024). Quantitative social impact assessment can also use some aspects of descriptive statistics or attribution and counterfactual social impact analysis. Such analysis will focus on evaluating the extent to which the observed outcomes can be attributed to the identified specific interventions.
For counterfactual social impact analysis, the outcomes are compared with the most plausible alternative scenarios if the intervention did not occur. This often offers insights into the intervention’s contribution to the impact. Such analysis often uses techniques like Difference-in-Difference (DID), Randomized Control Trials (RCTs), Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Synthetic Control Method (SCM) (Arts & Morrison-Saunders, 2022). Though reports are generated from such analysis to inform the social impact management plan for the project, further analysis is important for assessing the new social impacts that can arise to require the modification or change of the social impact assessment plan.
CONCLUSION
Social impact assessment not necessarily indicates negative social impacts, but also positive aspects of the project being implemented. In most of the cases, some of the development projects undertaken by the government produce positive outcomes that far outweigh the negative social impacts that may arise from the project’s implementation.
But still a critical analysis of the social impact of the project being implemented is essential for project managers to discern how to mitigate or prevent such negative social impacts to ensure the project offers more enormous positive social impacts for the surrounding local communities.
In that context, social impact assessment tends to be part of the proactive project risk identification and mitigation strategies. Some of the projects which are ignored today may turn out to be the source of dissatisfactions, frustrations and anger of the local communities that turn into protracted riots and protests.
Yet if the opposition political parties and activists politicize such undesirable negative social impacts of the project, it can significantly affect the successful project implementation. Some of the governments that will later come into power may refuse to continue with the implementation of public projects that socially destroy the communities. For that reason, social impact assessment is quite important for improving the capabilities of project managers to identify and mitigate any social threats that may affect the effective project execution.
Even pure business entities that are concerned with profit generation, social impact assessment is often part of the wider corporate social responsibility initiatives that project contractors can use for promoting and marketing themselves as not only concerned about profit generation, but also about the social wellbeing of the surrounding population.
This improves the confidence and trust that the public have in such project contractors to bolster their brand image and reputation as well as capabilities to attract the attention to be awarded such similar projects in the future. However, to achieve positive outcomes that can influence the increment of a project management firm’s profitability and returns on investment, a general consensus from theories and literature suggest social impact assessment would require the use of ten main steps that encompass development of an effective public plan, context analysis, initial screening, scooping, planning, baseline social impact assessment, impact prediction, analysis and assessment, mitigation planning, enhancing benefits and opportunities, and subsequently ongoing engagement and monitoring.
Though usage of such a process can improve the effectiveness of social impact assessment, future studies must still evaluate the factors that limit the effectiveness of social impact assessment.
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Okanga is the Professor of Innovation Strategy with current research focusing on Innovation Project Management.
Edinburgh Napier University-Scotland
