Are Information Campaigns Able to Influence the Social Acceptance of the German Energy Transition?

The transition of the German energy system towards a more sustainable energy system has already been decided by the German parliament. This decision is a necessary requirement to reach the EU's 2030 goals for climate and energy. However, in a socio-technical system such as the energy system, a “top-down” initiated transition process requires social acceptance, in particular for the installation of new energy infrastructure. To this extent, it is important to investigate measures that can be used to influence the social acceptance of energy transition among the citizens. In our study, we focus primarily on the role of information campaigns in influencing the social acceptance among the German population.

For the examination of this issue, we designed an experimental survey on the basis of the Elaboration-Likelihood Model of persuasion (ELM) of [Petty & Cacioppo, 1986] and administered it to a representative sample of the German population. In our quantitative study, we examine the influence of a large number of factors on the acceptance of energy technologies. For example, we study the influence of arguments for and against electricity generating technologies (coal power plants, gas power plants, offshore wind power plants, offshore wind power plants, solar parks, and biomass power plants) on the social acceptance of the technologies. The arguments used in our survey were developed by an interdisciplinary research team at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and scaled according to their persuasiveness in a previous study. The data is still to be analyzed in autumn 2017. A paper will be available by March 2018.