How to promote community social acceptance of solid biomass in Europe? Identifying firms' best practices

Emilio De Meo (), Antonio Lopolito (), Maurizio Prosperi (), Giacomo Giannoccaro () and Rosa Anna Ciccone ()
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Emilio De Meo: University of Foggia & AgroEnergy STAR* Research Group
Antonio Lopolito: University of Foggia & AgroEnergy STAR* Research Group
Maurizio Prosperi: University of Foggia & AgroEnergy STAR* Research Group
Giacomo Giannoccaro: University of Foggia & AgroEnergy STAR* Research Group
Rosa Anna Ciccone: University of Foggia

Economics Bulletin, 2014, vol. 34, issue 4, 2080-2092

Abstract: The siting of solid biomass energy plants can be conceived as a transaction process taking place between two specific economic agents, the investor and local community. The investor is interested in obtaining the use rights for local resources (e.g., area for setting; natural resources to feed the process, release of pollutants into the environment) while the community expects an increase in net benefits (e.g., job opportunities, induced industrial development). This transaction process has been analyzed according to the typical transaction costs theory, where the economic activities are conceived as the result of transactions among economic agents, which are hindered by three main obstacles: i) bounded rationality, ii) opportunism, iii) asset specificity. By applying the New Institutional theory approach, we treat the issue of social acceptance as a transaction cost problem. The aim is to identify the best practices adopted by biomass firms' managers in order to enhance the social acceptance of solid biomass plants at the local community level. In this paper, we conduct a positive analysis where the methodological approach is based on the comparison of six successful study cases. This allowed us to identify twelve measures capable of fostering social acceptance and consequently of reducing the costs related to the investment.

Keywords: transaction costs; new instutional theory; social acceptance; bio-energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B4 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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