Social impacts
Because it is arduous to separate economic impacts from social
influences, social impacts are regarded as the most difficult phenomenon for researchers to measure scientifically (Oh, 1999). Many
studies have utilized the economic concept of “cost” to objectively
measure and analyze social impact phenomena; thus the term
“social cost” has become the dominant medium to identify the
strength and dimension of social impacts. However, this approach,
which is based on the perspective of economic impacts to analyze
and discuss social cost, has triggered many controversial debates of
“what social cost is” and “what the definition of social cost should
be” in social science.