Uncertainty and social impacts: A case study of a Belgian village

The paper discusses social impacts in a village in Flanders resulting from the construction of a container terminal near the port of Antwerp. First of all, attention will be paid to the research design (key experts, public hearing, information centre, and survey) and the main research results. It will be shown that the social impact will be very significant. Then the paper explains this impact by focusing on the importance of uncertainty. It will be argued that uncertainty plays an important role in the decision-making process of households in the predevelopment and development stage. In this case and context, this means that uncertainty results in people leaving the village. These microdecisions will result in larger macroeffects due to a decrease in the communityʹs social cohesion (a decrease in the importance of one of the possible motives of staying) and a change in the system of interaction. The latter creates a crowding-out effect by means of what could be labelled Schellingsʹ interaction mechanism.