choice experiment technique assessment on valuation of sustainable mining social impacts

Job creation is one of the important social impacts of mining, which is considered in many aspects. The number of new jobs created, the duration of employment, the acquisition of skills for employment in other mines and the duration of work in inappropriate conditions (sometimes underground mines) can be attributed to the job creation opportunities created by mining in the region. In addition to the above mentioned, mining has positive social impacts such as creating welfare facilities and improving the livelihoods of the people of the region and negative impacts, such as the creation of social anomalies and the collapse of gender balance. So far, much research has been done on the economic and environmental impacts of mining, and the third criterion of sustainable development, which is a community, has been neglected. In this paper, the "choice experiment" method, a new method of "stated preferences" approach, has been used to estimate the value of social impacts of mining. In this study, the social impacts of mining on two parts of employment and other social impacts of mining have been investigated. For this purpose, a questionnaire was prepared and the results of 780 responses for each section after encoding were entered into the STATA software and its appropriate pattern and respondents preferences according to the coefficients and pattern results. Based on the results of estimating conditional logit in both section, Lagrange's ratio is statistically significant which shows a significant regression for the model. Also, according to the results of this research, it can be said that for respondents, the number of jobs and desirability of the livelihood is the highest value and they are ready to work longer in inappropriate conditions, provided that these conditions do not lead to social anomalies in their place of residence.