Does Financial Participation Promote the Acceptance of the Energy Transition?
66 Pages Posted: 28 Apr 2022
Abstract
The energy transition is a societal transformation task that is changing the familiar living environment, for example through new energy infrastructure projects that are often fraught with conflicts. Citizen participation is increasingly seen as a way to address these conflicts and to increase acceptance of citizens for the energy transition (ET).We investigate how financial participation in the ET (e.g. investing in renewable energy projects) and the acceptance of the ET are interrelated. We are particularly interested in the relationship between financial participation and the acceptance of the ET as a whole, its implementation at the local level, and other acceptance dimensions such as energy-saving behaviour. We analyse data of an online survey (n=300) in Germany utilizing test statistics for group comparisons. We find that financial participation is positively related to the general acceptance and the active acceptance in the form of volunteering in initiatives or purchasing green electricity. No evidence was found that financial participation is related to active acceptance in terms of energy saving behaviour. Further, the findings support that local acceptance of renewable energy projects is high if the individual also holds a share in this project.
Keywords: energy transition, acceptance, financial participation, renewable energy projects, energy cooperatives, household survey
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