Knowledge, perceptions and expectations of Quebec residents regarding rare earth element mining: characteristics associated with social acceptability

Exploitation of critical raw materials (CRMs), including rare earth elements (REEs), is growing rapidly in Quebec but raises environmental and health concerns that may compromise their social acceptability. This article analyses the knowledge, perceptions and expectations of actors, whether or not they are involved in REEs exploitation in Quebec, in order to identify the characteristics associated with the social acceptability of this sector. Thus, 1752 actors from both metropolitan and mining areas participated through online surveys. The sample is non-probabilistic and unevenly distributed between the two areas (1557 and 195 respondents respectively), so the findings describe the population reached by the survey rather than the Quebec population as a whole. Collected data were processed using several qualitative (lexical and co-occurrence analysis) and quantitative (descriptive statistics and decision tree) approaches. Through the decision trees, the results indicate that knowledge regarding these resources in Quebec remains generally low (21.8% for CRMs; 30.6% for REEs) and varies according to exposure to mining activities, gender, level of education, age and place of residence. Furthermore, more than half of the respondents are neutral or indifferent towards development of REEs in Quebec, while opponents emphasize the environmental and health impacts (pollution and effects on water supplies). In fostering the social acceptability of these projects, the study recommends strong community involvement in decisions that are related to exploitation of REEs, thereby aligning with expectations of the 36.9% of respondents wishing to participate in the decision process.