Social stability risks of NIMBY transport projects in China—a discrete choice experiment based on public acceptance preferences

Introduction: Chinese transport infrastructure investments often provoke Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) protests and challenge social stability. Existing NIMBY studies in China focus on individual influencing factors and rarely quantify how combinations of project attributes jointly shape acceptance preferences. Method: We developed a social-ecological systems (SES)-informed analytical framework that links environmental conditions, residents’ mindset, and governance to public acceptance preferences under different NIMBY transport scenarios. A discrete choice experiment (n = 812) and mixed logit models were used. Results : Key factors included noise, housing quality and safety, compensation fairness, public demand response, and project disclosure. Combining favorable attribute levels produced higher predicted acceptance than improving one attribute alone; the most favorable simulated combination yielded an upper-bound predicted acceptance probability of 97.33 %. Formal interaction tests showed that robust heterogeneity was mainly concentrated in noise-related preferences by marital status, education, and income. Conclusion : Housing quality and safety was the most important attribute, followed by compensation fairness and noise level. Policy responses should combine housing safety monitoring, transparent compensation, timely complaint handling, and targeted noise-risk communication for groups with robust noise-related preference heterogeneity. Practical Application : This study provides quantitative evidence to inform NIMBY transport policy, conflict management, and social stability risk assessment.