焚化爐為現今被廣為使用於處理固體廢棄物的方法。但由於民眾對焚化爐的知識不足加上對政府的信任感瓦解，對焚化爐的營運管理沒信心，以致於反焚化爐事件層出不窮。在這樣事事被”反”的年代?，瞭解民眾對風險的認知是從事風險溝通與風險管理一最重要的依據。 本研究為縱貫式研究，以自填封閉式問卷針對台中市焚化爐周圍10公里的居民，依距離分為四區域施以問卷調查，目的在瞭解民眾對環境危害物質的風險判斷是否會反映在於焚化爐距離遠近上，進一步探討其可能造成差異的原因。研究的假設為：1.民眾會隨距離焚化爐遠近而有不同的風險認知 ，2.居住在焚化爐附近居民比一般人對環境風險有較高的風險認知。問卷實施分為兩階段調查，個別使用不同的問卷，調查民眾對環境危害物質的判斷及對焚化爐的意見。由於問卷依變項為有序性類別資料，統計分析上採用polychotomous logistic regression (SAS PC/8.0)作為本研究的分析模式。 結果顯示居民對於科技與自然風險的判斷都偏向高危害，並未受距離焚化爐遠近的影響具有普遍性。與背景資料來比較發現性別對風險的認知有差異，女性對風險的判斷比男性較高。對於焚化爐，民眾大都贊成興建焚化爐，而對於政府、專家、環保團體與新聞媒體所提出的風險評估報告發現居住在5公里內的居民多持不信任態度。焚化爐附近居民可接受焚化爐的距離為132.8公里，顯示出居民對於科技設備的NIMBY效應。此結果與國外研究有一致之處，可供相關單位做為參考之依據。; Incineration of municipal wastes is widely used to manage solid wastes. It was constantly resisted that when lay people lacks knowledge about a modern incinerator, social trust of the government in Taiwan. In the epoch of everything were resisted, comprehending the public risk perception is a prerequisite to establish a trustworthy risk-communication and risk-management. This paper illustrated the result from a longitudinal study on the basis of a population living near the incinerator in Taichung. Four surveys were conducted at different districts of Taichung .A self-administered questionnaire was used to estimate the risk perception in relation to 43 risks and attitudes toward the incinerator. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether public risk perception toward incinerator would be influenced by mean of the effects of distance .It was postulated that public has difference perceptions of risk among four distances and residents lived near the incinerator would have high-level risk judgments. From the result, we revealed that the residents had much higher perceptions of risk, and their judgments toward chemical risk were related to their educations level and gender. The relationship between the risk perception level and the distance was not significant.72% of the resident population favored to construct modern incinerators and the attitude of public has distrust toward governments and experts. The residents regarded as the acceptable distance between their house and the modern incinerator would be 132.8 km. This result show the public toward technology facilities has NIMBY effect. When we conducted associated researches in the future, we should pay more attention about the phenomena emerged from this study in behalf of preventing to elicit inappropriate conclusions.
