Public Acceptance of a Local Wind Energy Project: The effect of voice on perceived procedural fairness and project acceptance.

Wind energy companies intend to successfully implement wind farms without opposition from the local residents. The present study experimentally investigated the effect of local residents' “voice” on perceived procedural fairness of the decision-making procedure and willingness to accept the wind energy project's implementation. An online survey was published on Prolific, in which participants (N = 199) were asked to sympathize with a fictitious town where they were residents and a wind farm project was planned. The experimental conditions were; no-voice, voice and pseudo-voice. The amount of “say” the residents had in the decision-making process of the project and whether their input was taken into account, differed between conditions. I hypothesized and found that participants who had an opportunity to voice their opinion and had their ideas implemented, perceive the decision-making process as more fair than those who were in a no-voice or pseudo-voice situation. Contrary to my...Show moreWind energy companies intend to successfully implement wind farms without opposition from the local residents. The present study experimentally investigated the effect of local residents' “voice” on perceived procedural fairness of the decision-making procedure and willingness to accept the wind energy project's implementation. An online survey was published on Prolific, in which participants (N = 199) were asked to sympathize with a fictitious town where they were residents and a wind farm project was planned. The experimental conditions were; no-voice, voice and pseudo-voice. The amount of “say” the residents had in the decision-making process of the project and whether their input was taken into account, differed between conditions. I hypothesized and found that participants who had an opportunity to voice their opinion and had their ideas implemented, perceive the decision-making process as more fair than those who were in a no-voice or pseudo-voice situation. Contrary to my prediction, participants in the pseudo-voice situation perceived the process as more fair (instead of less fair) than those in the no-voice situation. As predicted, the voice situation led to a greater willingness to accept the project than the pseudo-voice and slightly higher than the no-voice situation. I further predicted that the no-voice situation would lead to higher acceptance than the pseudo-voice situation, but found no difference in acceptance between the two conditions. Finally, the results provided evidence for the idea that effects of voice procedure on project acceptance are mediated by perceived procedural fairness of the decision-making process when comparing voice to pseudo-voice and no-voice situations.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Public Acceptance of a Local Wind Energy Project: The effect of voice on perceived procedural fairness and project acceptance.