Public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy in China: The role of public knowledge, perceived benefit, perceived risk and public engagement
Introduction
With the rapid development of economy and the population growth, global energy demands have increased substantially which has caused many negative effects such as global warming, the rising energy prices and the energy security issues (Park and Ohm, 2014, Wu, 2017, Vainio et al., 2017). To cope with these adverse effects, many countries have tried to change their energy structure, reduce the reliance on fossil flues and promote the development of renewable energy such as nuclear energy,1 solar energy, wind energy, hydropower energy, biomass energy, and geothermal energy (Bilgen et al., 2008, Jamil et al., 2016, Ho et al., 2018). Among these renewable energy sources, nuclear energy has attracted widely attention because of its scale application compared with other renewable energy resources (Baris and Kucukali, 2012, Wu, 2017, Chung and Kim, 2018). Countries with a lack of fossil fuels (e.g., South Korea, Japan and Belgium) and several major carbon emission countries (e.g., France, India and US) have all paid great attention to the development of nuclear energy (Mah et al., 2014, Ho et al., 2018).
In fact, as early as the 1950s, the development and utilization of nuclear energy has begun in USA. To respond to the oil crisis in the 1970s and boost the economic development, the USA government has further supported the development of nuclear energy (Gralla et al., 2017). Currently, the USA is the world's largest nuclear energy producer and has the largest number of nuclear power plants (Lovering et al., 2016). By the end of 2016, there are 104 nuclear power plants in USA. France, Russia and Japan are also the major nuclear energy producers in the world and the numbers of nuclear power plants of these countries are all more than 30 (Ming et al., 2016). The purpose of these countries to develop and utilize nuclear energy is mainly focused on protecting national energy security and reducing carbon emissions (Ho et al., 2018). As the largest carbon emitter and oil importer in the world, the Chinese government has also paid great attention to nuclear energy. The medium-and long-term Nuclear Energy Development Plan (2005–2020) and Nuclear Energy Safety Plan (2011–2015) have stated that China prepares to build 6–8 nuclear power plants each year during its 13th Five-Year Plan and the total installation and under construction capacity of nuclear power plants would reach 90 million kilowatt by 2020 (Tang et al., 2014, Wang et al., 2015). The Chinese government is the most ambitious country to develop nuclear energy and is full of confidence in its nuclear energy development plan (Wu, 2017).
However, the recent Japanese Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident has influenced the nuclear energy policy of many countries (Wittneben, 2012, Kawaguchi and Yukutake, 2017). For example, after the accident, Japan promptly decided to stop all remaining nuclear power reactors in the country. However, since Abe Shinzo came back to the Prime Minister's office in 2012, Japan went back to its original nuclear policies and operation of these halted reactors has resumed. Germany and Italy declared to suspend and even shut down nuclear power plants (Sun and Zhu, 2014). Spain and Portugal prepared to maintain the status quo (Gokmenoglu and Kaakeh, 2018). China, Canada, USA, Russia, France, Finland and India were still stick to develop nuclear energy but prepared to slow down the speed of nuclear energy development. They also promised to pay more attention to the security issues and make more stringent regulatory systems and safety standards (Mah et al., 2014).
Meanwhile, public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy are reduced dramatically and even opposition to the nuclear energy development after the Fukushima accident (Kim et al., 2014, Zhu et al., 2016). For example, an anti-nuclear protest against Jiangmen nuclear power plant project was happened in Guangdong province, China in July 2013. In Germany, after the Fukushima nuclear accident, more than 80% German opposed the development of nuclear energy, while in Austria the opposition was as high as 90% (Kim et al., 2014). Hence, understanding public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy and investigating what factors affect public acceptance are important to the development of nuclear energy. This is what we will set out to do in the current study.
The remainder of this paper is constructed as follows. Section 2 provides a review of literature. Section 3 illustrates theoretical framework and methodology, including research hypotheses, research sample, and data collection procedure issues. Section 4 presents the data analysis results. Section 5 discusses the research results and provides policy implications. In the final Section, we conclude this research and point out the limitations.
Section snippets
Literature review
The threats of global climate warming and the exhaustion of fossil fuels have aroused worldwide attention and fuelled many countries to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and look for alternatives to fossil fuels (Mah et al., 2014, Vainio et al., 2017). Currently, nuclear energy is considered as a suitable alternative (Ho et al., 2018). As a clean and renewable energy sources, the development and utilization of nuclear energy can protect the national energy security, stable energy price,
Research hypotheses
Perceived risk, perceived benefit, public knowledge and public engagement are all important factors affect public acceptance of nuclear energy. Based on the above literature review, it is known that when public perceive the benefits of nuclear energy, they will be more likely to accept nuclear energy. However, when public perceive the risks of nuclear energy, they will be less likely to accept nuclear energy. Meanwhile, when public are full of knowledge about nuclear energy, have opportunities
Descriptive statistical analysis
Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to explore the means, standard deviations and correlations of the constructs studied. The results of descriptive statistical analysis for all constructs were shown in Table 2. In general, the mean of construct reflected the level of respondents’ perceptions to the construct. As shown in Table 2, respondents shown the highest level of perceived risk (Mean = 3.73). The mean of public acceptance (Mean = 3.02) is at a moderate level and near the
Discussion and policy implications
The current study examines public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy, and explores the relationships between public knowledge, perceived benefit, perceived risk, public engagement and public acceptance of nuclear energy. The results indicated that perceived risk has a positive effect on public acceptance of nuclear energy. This result is inconsistent with several previous researches such as Kim et al. (2014), Park and Ohm (2014), Zhu et al. (2016) and Zeng et al. (2017). The possible
Conclusion and limitations
In light of the vital role public acceptance play in the development of nuclear energy, the present research developed a conceptual model to examine public acceptance of nuclear energy, and explore the effects of public knowledge, perceived benefit, perceived risk and public engagement on public acceptance of nuclear energy. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether and how public knowledge, perceived benefit, perceived risk and public engagement affect public acceptance of nuclear
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 71601174, 71804174 and 71571172), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant no. 2018M632555), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant no. WK2040150015), National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 16CJL020), Fujian Fund of Soft Science Research (Grant no. 2017R0034) and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Fujian Province University.
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