Social license to operate: Factors determining social acceptance among local port community stakeholders

Ports are increasingly facing opposition to their operations as a consequence of the negative externalities they generate. Local community stakeholders, for instance, are often seen to be particularly sensitive to, and vocal about, the local impacts of ports. Considering the influence of external stakeholders on port operations, port authorities have pursued strategies articulated around triple-bottom line impacts and stakeholder engagement, in quest of a ‘social license to operate’. However, to this day, the effectiveness of such strategies is unclear, as the motivations of local communities, in terms of opposing or accepting port operations, remain largely unexplored. We therefore provide here a hypothesized model of social license to operate for the port industry. The model suggests that positive experiences and perceptions of local communities regarding port impacts (economic, environmental, social), and port stakeholder engagement contribute to the acceptance of port activities. Data has been collected by means of an online survey administered to local community stakeholders living in proximity to the four Flemish seaports of Antwerp, Ghent, Ostend, and Zeebrugge. In total, 976 valid responses were collected. To assess the validity of our model, an analysis of relationships between the different variables has been carried out by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). Our results reveal the significant effect of positively perceived and experienced port impacts, and stakeholder engagement, by Flemish local community stakeholders on the acceptance of port operations in Flanders. As such, our findings stress the importance for port authorities of proactively striving for a balanced assessment and execution of negative impact mitigation strategies and local communities’ involvement in their decisions.