Keep it local and fish-friendly: Social acceptance of hydropower projects in Switzerland

Abstract

Hydropower is the largest source of renewable electricity in the world, but despite being a mature and clean energy technology it has also been the subject of ecological and social conflict. Literature suggests that the social acceptance of renewable energy can be increased by respecting procedural justice (fair, participatory planning processes) and distributional justice (fairly allocating costs and benefits). However, empirical evidence about how justice considerations are related to the expansion of hydropower is scarce, pre-existing studies being mostly qualitative in nature. We contribute to filling the gap in the current literature by describing in this paper how choice experiments with 1004 Swiss residents were undertaken to explore the influence of procedural and distributional justice on acceptance, relative to other attributes of hydropower projects. We find that while considerations about justice do play a role in decisions to accept, respondents in Switzerland care most about ecological impacts, and secondly about local ownership.

Red is the new blue – The role of color, building integration and country-of-origin in homeowners​' preferences for residential photovoltaics

“…Previous studies have shown that disclosing the country of origin can have an affective meaning to people, due to the emotional connotations people have with a specific country or due to the normative meaning when people view purchasing local goods as a way to support the local economy [39,64]. The identification of preferences of Swiss consumers for locally produced PV panels from Switzerland over German PV panels is in line with previous findings from the renewable energy literature that also reveals Swiss citizens' strong preference for Swiss over German ownership of hydropower plants [65]. This strong preference should encourage manufacturers from Switzerland to emphasize the Swiss origin of the panels in their marketing efforts to differentiate themselves on the basis of the country-of-origin effect.…”

An Investigation of Factors Affecting the Willingness to Invest in Renewables among Environmental Students: A Logistic Regression Approach

“…Other variables affecting investment willingness encompass educational level, house ownership, as well as preference for maintaining comfort, status quo, and social class. Of these, high educational Sustainability 2019, 11, 5012 5 of 18 level [29,34] and house ownership [23] have been found to have a positive effect on an individual's willingness to invest in renewable energy, while higher educational levels are also linked to increased concerns about the ecological impacts of renewable installations [40]. Meanwhile, in their decision to change their current fossil fuel-based energy system, homeowners can be affected by social norms [9] and their wish to maintain their accustomed comfort and current status quo [29].…”

Co-production in distributed generation: renewable energy and creating space for fitting infrastructure within landscapes

“…Despite being the most widely applied renewable source to date, it is typically a CGRS with heavy landscape impacts, especially ecosystem damage (Tabi & Wüstenhagen, 2017). Increasingly, small and micro-hydro units are providing a DGRS alternative with reduced ecological impact, under the condition of careful siting that takes ecological and landscape concerns into account (Armstrong & Bulkeley, 2014).…”