Are LULUs still enduringly objectionable?

We asked a national sample of 651 US residents about the feelings, emotions, images and colours they associated with nearby waste management, energy, industrial facilities and other big developments commonly regarded as locally unwanted land uses (LULUs). The respondents showed the expected dislike of them, picking ‘bad’, ‘fear’, ‘polluted’, red and black to describe them more than ‘safe’, ‘secure’, ‘jobs’ and other positive descriptors and images. Waste management facilities, especially nuclear ones, had the most negative labels, and coal and gas energy facilities had fewer than anticipated. This survey occurred prior to the events in the Fukushima plant in Japan. However, even before those events LULU concerns endured and nuclear facilities and chemical and metal plants were the most distressing to the public as a whole.