Perceived Environmental Injustice in a Transboundary Radioactive Waste Siting Dispute: Implications for Social Sustainability in Border Communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Drawing on environmental justice theory and treating social sustainability as an interpretive rather than directly measured outcome, this cross-sectional study examines perceived distributive, recognition, and procedural justice surrounding the proposed Trgovska Gora radioactive-waste facility. Data comprise 385 valid questionnaires from a field-based non-probability sample of adults in eight municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ordinal construct validation using polychoric correlations and maximum-likelihood exploratory factor analysis provided qualified support for three primary dimensions (CFI = 0.955, TLI = 0.910, SRMR = 0.022; RMSEA = 0.128). Composite reliability ranged from 0.909 to 0.928, AVE from 0.715 to 0.763, and HTMT among the primary constructs from 0.679 to 0.845; broader governance/institutional-response items were therefore treated as supplementary. Composite means were above the neutral midpoint: distributive injustice, M = 4.304 (SD = 0.825); recognition injustice, M = 4.109 (SD = 0.920); and core procedural justice, M = 4.351 (SD = 0.744). These midpoint comparisons are descriptive rather than an independent validation of the hypotheses. HC3-robust municipality-adjusted models (N = 380) explained 21.0–28.3% of outcome variance, with municipality contributing significantly to all three models. Because the design is cross-sectional and the sample is non-probability based, the findings describe patterns among surveyed respondents rather than population-level or causal effects. The social-sustainability implications concern perceived fairness, voice, recognition, and institutional legitimacy; trust, cohesion, facility acceptance, and long-term governance capacity were not directly measured.