Gender, Institutional Trust, and Spatial Resistance to Nuclear Power Plants: A National NIMBY Study from Türkiye

Abstract

This study examines the dynamics of local resistance to nuclear power plants (NPPs), specifically the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) phenomenon, within the context of Türkiye’s nuclear energy policies, and the role of gender, at the national level. The study was designed within the framework of the correlational survey model. Data were collected from 703 respondents via multistage random sampling by TurkStat to represent the national population. The dataset was analyzed using hierarchical logistic regression, MANOVA, McNemar, and serial mediation. The findings indicate that educational level and nuclear knowledge exert no statistically significant effect on local NPP acceptance, providing no support for the Knowledge Deficit Model in the Turkish sample. The rigid local resistance exhibited by female respondents (77.6%) was independent of parental status, and the gender gap in nuclear attitudes was attributed not to biological motivations but to heightened risk perception and compromised institutional trust. Furthermore, when relocation intention (behavioral resistance) was examined, perceived macro-level benefits and demographic variables lost their predictive power entirely. These results demonstrate that social acceptance of nuclear energy projects in Türkiye depends not on objective information or the expectation of economic benefits, but on the construction of institutional trust in decision-making bodies.