A significant body of evidence now exists that examines the motivations behind public opposition to the siting of waste or hazardous facilities. Some of these contributions have made a distinction between private and social determinants of opposition to a facility. The contribution of the current paper is to examine the statistical importance of variables that characterise this debate in the context of a proposal to build a landfill facility around Val Vibrata in Italy. While some roles are found for social motives such as ideas about fairness in explaining opposition, in this case, it is also found that the degree of social concern "decays" with distance lived from the site. One interpretation could be that respondents' stated public motives could be a way to articulate private concerns. At the very least, these findings suggest that it can be far from straightforward to unbundle explanations of opposition.