Refining the preconditions of a social licence to operate (SLO) : reflections on citizens’ attitudes towards mining in two Finnish regions

Abstract

The debate around the social licence to operate (SLO) has been lively in recent years. In its elementary forms, the SLO is interpreted as the social acceptance granted by a community to mineral exploration and mining activities. Our theoretical assumption is that the SLO as a concept is both case-specific and more general, contingent, among other things, upon public opinion. In this study, acceptance is considered as general and anticipatory in the sense that it can act as a precondition for individual SLOs. Our intention is to contribute especially to recent novel research focusing on the more general background and factors contributing to the SLO. Using survey data (N = 1064), we explore relationships of factors potentially connected to the SLO in two Finnish regions where in the last decade mining has been a growing industry. We are concerned with the connection between the acceptability of mining and six factors measured by nine variables. The findings show that the six factors investigated are indeed connected to acceptance but not in any straightforward manner.