The Impact of Beliefs, Motives and Worl...

With increasing demand for renewable energy, research focusing on social acceptance of the facilities necessary to harness the respective sources such as wind and the sun has firmly established itself over the past decades. We built on this rich literature investigating factors from social-acceptance research but expand this set of variables with theoretical insights from risk perception literature, noteably ideology, most promintently discussed in cultural theory of risk and cultural cognition research. While the influence of ideology on individuals perceptions’ and behaviour has received widespread scholarly attention regarding a variety of topical issues from vaccinations, to gun legislation and climate change, social acceptance of renewable energy technologies (RET) has not been one of them. The study presented here is aimed at addressing this shortcoming in the literature by examining the predictive power of various constructs, including ideology, with respect to individuals’ willingness to accept the building of RET in their vicinity.