Environmental and societal problems related to energy use have spurred the development of sustainable energy technologies, such as wind mills, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen vehicles. Public acceptance of these technologies is crucial for their successful introduction into society. Although various studies have investigated technology acceptance, most technology acceptance studies focused on a limited set of factors that can influence public acceptance, and were not based on a comprehensive framework including key factors influencing technology acceptance. This paper puts forward a comprehensive framework of energy technology acceptance, based on a review of psychological theories and on empirical technology acceptance studies. The framework aims to explain the intention to act in favor or against new sustainable energy technologies, which is assumed to be influenced by attitude, social norms, perceived behavioral control, and personal norm. In the framework, attitude is influenced by the perceived costs, risks and benefits, positive and negative feelings in response to the technology, trust, procedural fairness and distributive fairness. Personal norm is influenced by perceived costs, risks and benefits, outcome efficacy and awareness of adverse consequences of not accepting the new technology. The paper concludes with discussing the applicability of the framework.
There is general recognition that trust and affect are closely connected concepts. Usually, affect is modeled as an antecedent of trust. In the present research, we will argue that, particularly in new situations, trust can also evoke affect toward a risky object. Using structural equation modeling, support was found for the hypothesis that trust influences attitudes through this process. In the present study, we analyzed attitudes toward (carbon dioxide) CO(2) storage. The role of affect appears to be moderated by the level of self-relevance. In the case of high self-relevance (storage nearby), people's attitudes appeared to be merely based on affective reactions and trust. This effect is much weaker under low self-relevance (CO(2) storage in general). In such a case, cognitive factors, more particularly beliefs concerning perceived benefits, were also taken into account in attitude formation.
Energy projects aimed at a sustainable energy transition can trigger strong negative emotions and resistance from the public. While practitioners are increasingly realising that they cannot simply ignore public emotions, they struggle with how to deal with people’s emotional responses and how to secure public acceptability of sustainable energy projects. We argue that a first critical step in order to adequately address emotional responses to energy projects is to understand where these emotional responses come from. We introduce a value-based approach, which entails that different characteristics of energy projects may violate or support people’s core values, which evokes emotions in people. We present a theoretical framework of the relationship between people’s values, the (perceived) implications of energy projects for these values, and people’s emotional responses to energy projects. We give examples from case studies in the literature to substantiate our reasoning, and we offer directions for future research. Our novel approach provides critical insights for project developers, decision makers, engineers, and scientists who aim to better understand the human dimension of a sustainable energy transition.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.