IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018 - 54

Public participation and engagement early in the siting process
can help prevent cancellation or changes later in the process,
when substantial investments have already been made.

public acceptability of energy projects, it is important to look at
which values underlie people's acceptability judgements as well
as their evaluations of the costs and benefits of energy projects.
there is initial evidence to suggest that emphasizing the benefits of sustainable solutions for people's core values reduces
their scepticism and increases their support for these solutions. at the same time, it is not possible to reframe any type of
energy project as supporting any type of values. For example,
research suggests that people with strong biospheric values are
not readily convinced by the argument from industry and/or
governments that nuclear energy and natural gas are relatively
environmentally friendly.
Place Attachment

energy projects that are large in scale bring fundamental
changes to the character, including the visual appearance,
of the localities where they are sited. as mentioned earlier, projects may be objected to if they are interpreted as
industrializing the character of a place that is considered to
be natural, such as a rural landscape or coastal view. Place
attachment refers to the ways that certain valued places
come to be associated with positive emotional bonds and
become important aspects of people's identities. research
has shown that individuals with strong place attachments,
particularly those with "active" place bonds who like to
keep up with changes in the neighborhood, may view proposals to site energy projects as a threat to their identity,
associated with negative emotions such as anxiety, fear,
anger, shock, and frustration, leading to attempts to protect
or defend their place from unwanted change. analyzing the
relationships between people's place attachment and how
acceptable they find energy projects can help developers
and policy makers better identify how these projects affect
a specific locality.
Trust

energy projects are very complex, and people need to rely
on responsible parties for the development and implementation of these projects. the extent to which people trust
these parties can deeply influence the public's acceptance
of them. People can be critical about the role of the government and large energy companies in the development and
implementation of energy projects, which makes them reluctant to accept them. For example, people may not trust that
responsible parties will sufficiently mitigate and adequately
cope with the risks posed by energy projects. trust is a use54

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ful heuristic for people to evaluate the project and its implications; generally, the more people trust the regulators, the
more acceptable they find the project. trust in responsible
parties can also influence how people respond to provided
information to evaluate the costs and benefits of energy
projects and whether they think that these costs and benefits
are distributed fairly. importantly, trust can influence and
be influenced by how people perceive the decision-making
process in an energy project.

Summary and Practical Implications
Public acceptability and its causes are often misunderstood
and oversimplified by those responsible for the development and implementation of energy projects. common
misunderstandings about public acceptability can lead to
post hoc one-size-fits-all solutions that are ineffective in
increasing acceptability and may frustrate people by making them think they are not being taken seriously. Moreover, ill-designed solutions may unwittingly foster greater
social conflict instead of reducing it. We argue that public
acceptability is a complex construct that depends on the
characteristics of energy projects, the qualities and meanings of places where projects are sited, and general psychological and social factors. Furthermore, public acceptability
is dynamic and develops over time and can manifest itself
in many different forms. taking these complexities into
account, we outline concrete steps for progress toward a
sustainable energy transition.
✔ there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Public acceptability is more than merely toleration or a lack
of conflict or controversy. it is a complex construct
with multidimensional layers of values that need to be
considered over time. We defined four types of values that relate to energy decision making: biospheric,
altruistic, egoistic, and hedonic. there are also many
different communities and stakeholders in energy decision making that create a mosaic of many different
concerns and perceptions of risks and benefits. For
example, sense of place drives some concerns about
changes to the landscape and seascape that reflect important aspects of people's identity. equity is an issue
that needs careful attention, so (financial) incentives
need to be creative and take people's key concerns
into account.
✔ sustainable energy transition is a long-term process.
engagement strategies with interested and affected
january/february 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018