University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands : testing and adjusting the public acceptance models for a better wind of change

Dion, Astrid Priscilla (2019) Public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands : testing and adjusting the public acceptance models for a better wind of change.

[img] PDF
2MB
Abstract:As part of the renewable energy transition, for the past few years, the Netherlands has been implementing wind farms as its resource, both onshore and offshore. The onshore wind farms so far gained shallow public acceptance with various issues such as overlooked locals’ interests, unfairness sense and low trust to the government, and physical visibility, noise, and shadow of wind turbines. Previous studies showed that people possess a better acceptance of offshore wind farms in other countries. However, since offshore wind farms are newer and very different than the onshore ones, there is no research that specifically assesses the public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands. This research aimed to fill that gap by examining the public acceptance using an existing framework provided by POLIMP, an organization founded by the European Union. This organization consists of several research institutions that put interest in social aspects of sustainable development, including renewable energy technology. They identified five possible influential elements which were public awareness, fairness sense, trust towards stakeholders, evaluation of costs, risks, and, benefits of a technology/resource, and local context. This research tested that framework and based on the analysis of it, came up with a new adjusted framework, customized specially for investigating the factors that influence public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands. The data of this study were gathered with an online survey and analyzed quantitatively with correlation and regression methods. The results show that based on the existing framework, public’s high level of awareness, positive evaluation of costs, risks, and benefits and local context fit influenced public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands. The results from the new adjusted model reveal that knowledge about the needs of renewable energy and trust towards the researchers as the source of that knowledge is essential to influence public acceptance. Fairness sense, trust towards other involved stakeholders, and demographic characteristics did not give any positive influence to the public acceptance of offshore wind farms in the Netherlands.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:05 communication studies
Programme:Communication Studies MSc (60713)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/79333
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page