If a new mining venture (oil or gas wells) are developed in an area, the new economic activity will cause a number of economic and social changes in nearby settlements where workers may be housed and supporting industries may be located. How best can one evaluates the social and economic impacts of an oil/gas well.
There will be two groups of workers (i)who drill/develop the wells and construct infrastructure, and (ii) permanent workers who run the well after infrastructure development maybe for a well production life with an average of 20-30 years.
I think that a number of indicators are involved, including the employment of the local population, the lack of deterioration of the local natural environment, the improvement of the local infrastructure (schools, roads, water and electricity.)
The impacts are broad and some may be very difficult to quantify. You need to build a regional economic model that could be used to estimate, at least, the economic impacts. Gordon and Richardson once developed a model for Southern California that is very suitable for this purpose.
As far as am concerned, survey research design is the best here. Your population here are humans. These humans knows their economic status before and after the esterblisment of the oil well. They know the economic benefits they are deriving and the environmental challenges that arised as a result of the new oil well. However, a model may be designed to encapsulate all indicators of impacts to examine. These must include all socioeconomic indicators such as: Job opportunity, State GDP, ability of the people to obtain their three square means, good road networks; Business opportunities; localization of industries, Urban to Urban or Urban to rural migration, standard of living, the rate of falling sick of the people, good water supply/ availability of drinkable water, Increment vs reduction of truancy among the youth and the security of lives and properties of the people. If we look at these afformentioned indicators, we can see that the best methods of data collection here are opinions seeking through questionnaires and Documents Analysis(hospital documents; School documents, etc)
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