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The “stigma” associated with remediated contaminated land is the blighting effect on property value caused by perceived risk and uncertainty. Uncertainties relate to negative intangible factors such as the inability to effect a total “cure”, the risk of failure of the remediation method, the risk of changes in legislation or remediation standards, the difficulty in obtaining finance, or simply a fear of the unknown. Post‐remediation “stigma” is the residual loss in value after all costs of remediation, including insurance and monitoring, have been allowed for. It equates to the difference in value between a remediated contaminated site and a comparable “clean” site with no history of contamination. The initial results from a study of the market sales data of post‐remediated vacant residential land along the Swan River, in Perth, Western Australia, from 1992‐1998 are summarized. The aim of this ongoing research is to estimate the amount of “stigma” arising from a site’s contamination history and measure the effect of this on residential property values of remediated property. The results show that while a site’s contamination history impacts negatively on property prices, the price decreases are offset by the positive influence on price from additional amenities provided in the case study neighbourhood.

The post-Cold War period allowed the U.S. nuclear legacy of ecocide to be declassified and made public. The policy of nuclear secrecy, evident in Russia (see Mironova et al., this volume), was not merely an eastern practice. Western nuclear releases were kept equally under wraps. In England, for example, the Windscale disaster was not fully disclosed until 1987.¹ Likewise, releases from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington State, and other U.S. nuclear sites were kept undercover until the same period. The irony was that Americans learned of many of the nuclear skeletons in their closet around the time that Russians learned of theirs (see Mironova et al., this volume). It would appear that glasnost was contagious.

In this chapter, the title theme of “Disaster by Design” is explored and justified. Even from early times, the Aral Region was subject to alterations of natural conditions due to human intervention, often deliberate and designed. After the final conquest by Russia, the region became a fixed colony as part of the Soviet Union, ripe for exploitation characteristic of the Soviet approach to nature broadly and to stigmatized areas specifically. The Aral region was selected for irrigated cotton and other cultivation even though the consequences for desiccation of the sea, desertification, and salinization were understood. The decision was so calculated that even a cost–benefit analysis was offered to show that the Aral fishery was worth but a fraction of the cotton potential. The destruction of the region was made possible by a Soviet system of central planning and peripheral control. The brief glimmer of hope for the region evidenced during glasnost was the only moment where the Aral's fate was not sealed. The outcome is a model of ecological disaster by design, an environmental injustice, and an indication of the abusive nature of authoritarian power.

In this chapter, the post-disaster handling of the British Petroleum Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is analyzed according to the concept of “Public Reserve.” Public Reserve extends the theory of privacy from the individual into the context of corporate behavior and environmental regulation and management by government. Secrecy is viewed as a form of privacy.

The primary aim of this chapter is to explore stigmatization, stress, and coping among adolescent mothers and to identify positive coping mechanisms that not only resist stigmatization but also generate positive affect.

Fifty-two pregnant and parenting adolescents in an urban county in the Midwestern United States were recruited to participate. A journaling tool was developed and used to allow participants to express their thoughts and concerns in a real-time, reflexive manner. Data were coded at different “nodes” or themes. Concepts, such as stigma, stress, strength, and empowerment were operationalized into key words and “themes” based on previous published literature. Key phrases were used to code the journaling data.

Adolescent mothers used positive reappraisal of life circumstances to create a positive self-image and resist the stress of stigma and parenting. Overcoming stereotypes and success in parenting were reappraised as “strength,” which allowed the young women to feel empowered in their caregiving role.

The chapter also contributes to the sociological literature on positive coping responses to stigma and stress. Indeed, very few studies have employed the sociological imagination of pregnant and parenting adolescents by describing not only their lives but also seeking their understanding and explaining their lives sociologically. This chapter also has direct implications for several health care providers, including nurses and social workers. For example, nurses and social workers are a vital part of the healthcare team for pregnant and parenting adolescents, and they often serve as the link between the adolescent, her family and significant others, and healthcare and social service agencies.

This chapter described the mechanisms that adolescent mothers use to cope with stress with a focus on how caregiving generates positive affect through the voices of these young mothers themselves. This chapter contributed to the sociological literature on stress and coping. In particular, our findings were also in line with the work of sociologist Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence concept. SOC is a global measure that indicates the availability of, and willingness to use, adaptive coping resources as a key variable in maintaining health.

This study aims to analyze and assess 21 years of media coverage (2000–2020) of Flix, a small industrial village located in an rural area on north-eastern Spain, which has endured in these years a severe environmental and industrial crisis, with a strong potential for stigmatization of the place.

The research is conceptualized under the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, a theoretical/conceptual approach aimed at accounting for the huge gaps that often arise between public perception of technological or environmental risks of some technologies, products and places and the expert estimations of these risks. The authors studied the coverage on Flix by a local, a regional and a national newspaper through a content analysis where the corpus (1,524 news pieces) was coded for several variables, including tone, genre and thematic area.

The studied coverage was in general overwhelmingly negative and strongly focused on “bad news” relating to pollution and deindustrialization, although this was much less the case in the local newspaper than in the regional and, in particular, the national newspaper. Thus, a territorially escalated pattern clearly emerges from our research concerning the stigmatization potential of news media coverage for the specific case under scrutiny.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time such a longitudinal study of media coverage and its potential for place stigmatization is performed with this specific territorial perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the discount placed on high voltage overhead transmission lines is underestimated.

A quantitative analysis was undertaken, using a high voltage overhead transmission line (HVOTL) case study, to determine the effect on property values prior and post removal of the HVOTL structure. Sales data and demographics are compared to determine the change in neighbourhood characteristics.

The results show that while the HVOTL is in place, the impact on value is confined to those properties in close proximity. This is in contradiction to the findings, where on removal of the HVOTL, the property values of the whole neighbourhood improve significantly.

The implication of this research is that property valuers (appraisers) need to change the way they take into account the presence of HVOTLs when valuing property, with more emphasis, being placed on the neighbourhood rather than just the properties in close proximity. While the HVOTL was in place, only properties in close proximity were negatively affected, but on removal of the HVOTL the whole neighbourhood increased in value.

Results expand on current knowledge by demonstrating the difference between the discount rate that the valuers apply to the presence of the HVOTL, as compared to the positive impact to the whole neighbourhood on removal of the HVOTL.

This paper aims to investigate residents’ perceptions of risk towards owning and living in residential property in Christchurch subsequent to the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes to identify how these perceptions impact on the price residents are willing to pay for affected property. Such market behaviour can motivate homeowners to adopt risk mitigation measures.

An online survey was developed and the Web link distributed to Canterbury residents via the media. This method of distribution was adopted, as a postal survey was not possible due to the number of homes that had been destroyed by the earthquakes and the highly transient nature of the community as a result.

The results indicate that with the recent earthquake experience, residents are demonstrating risk mitigation behaviours through an aversion to investing in properties affected by, or with a risk of, liquefaction. Specifically, the majority of respondents had strong reservations about buying Technical Category 3 property, and would be prepared to pay 20 per cent (or > 20 per cent) less for it, indicating some stigma towards affected property. Further, most respondents would now prefer the construction of their home to be of a type that fared better in the earthquakes: lightweight, single-storey, with a concrete slab foundation. These housing preferences will likely drive the market towards the adoption of risk mitigation measures in the retrofit of existing homes as well as in the design and construction of new homes.

Due to the number of homes that had been destroyed by the earthquakes and the highly transient nature of the community as a result, probability sampling was not possible. This, together with the low response rate, means that the respondents surveyed may not be representative of the Christchurch population.

The outcomes of this research will be of interest not only to homeowners wanting to know how their home’s value has been impacted by market perceptions towards earthquake and liquefaction damage, particularly in the worst-affected areas, but also the rating valuers tasked with assessing property values for rating purposes. Property developers and builders involved in the repair of existing homes and construction of new homes will also want to know current market preferences. Government bodies will find the results informative of how the media has, and can be used, to motivate market behaviour towards risk mitigation, particularly in regard to “material risk” (as described in Solberg et al., 2010), that is risk from a scientific and technical viewpoint of probability of future risk, and as related to what has become known about these risks in terms of building structure, height, age, soil type/land categories and flood zones. Further, the results provide a gauge of how the community perceived the handling of the recovery process, so that the weaknesses highlighted can be addressed, which will help restore community trust.

This study fills a research void on the impact of residents’ perceptions of risk towards home ownership in a city impacted by significant earthquakes and resulting liquefaction.

Four cast iron lions guard the charming Lions footbridge crossing St. Petersburg's Griboedov Canal. The first author strolled across the bridge on an August evening in 1998 with a Russian friend, Polina. The experience presents a parable for concluding this volume:As we crossed the bridge in the dark, we barely avoided stepping into a gaping hole in the deck half way across. A person could easily fall through. I reacted as a typical American, immediately taking responsibility for doing something about the problem, looking for some board to place over the hole or a barrier to warn pedestrians or someone to report the hazard to who would address it promptly. Polina indicated that no Russian would make such a fuss, and she could think of no one to report the hazard to who would respond. As we stood discussing this problem before two of the guardian lions, a group of drunken soldiers began to cross the bridge from the far side, arm in arm, singing loudly. Sure enough, one slipped through the hole and, but for his comrades holding his arms, he would have plunged into the canal. Surely they will report it, I said, but Polina was doubtful. She saw little chance for some protective action to fix the bridge or even to warn passers-by to beware. We went on our way mindful of the problem left behind. Perhaps a month after my return to the U.S., I received an email from Polina that she had gone to the bridge and, to her surprise, it was fixed. “Perhaps,” she wrote, “there is hope for Russia after all.”

The purpose of this paper is to quantify leaky building stigma associated with monolithic claddings, explore how this stigma has likely been amplified by media coverage, estimate the number of affected properties and quantify the collective house price impact on homeowners of monolithic‐clad dwellings in the Auckland region.

Residential sales transaction data organised in two subgroups (single‐family houses and multi‐unit dwellings) from 1997 through 2006 are analysed using a series of annual hedonic pricing models to empirically test for the presence of stigma. This is coupled with a descriptive analysis of leaky building media coverage to understand how this coverage may be influencing the stigma.

The empirical results show that a leaky building stigma exists and is discounting prices of the Auckland Region's monolithic‐clad single family houses by 5 per cent and multi‐unit dwellings by 10 per cent. Approximately 37,500 monolithic‐clad dwellings have been built in the region since 1992 and their homeowners have suffered an estimated $1 billion reduction in property values due to leaky building stigma.

Although leaky building stigma primarily relates to monolithic claddings, this stigma reflects elevated weathertightness risks associated with several Mediterranean‐style architectural features.

The study's findings can be directly applied to residential valuation practice and can assist the New Zealand government more accurately assess the full economic cost of the nation's leaky building problem.

This research provides an initial empirical study on stigma associated with leaky building syndrome. The findings offer direction to further research on other domestic and international housing markets that are experiencing similar stigma phenomenon.