Comparing public support for nuclear and wind energy in Washington State

Azusa Uji, Jaehyun Song, Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: The proliferation of country and state-level net zero-emission commitments, rising energy costs, and the quest for energy security in the wake of the Ukraine crisis have renewed the debate about the future of energy sources. As opposed to elite discourse, the energy policy preferences of the public remain less explored. While many public opinion surveys report preferences for a specific type of clean energy, there is less work on understanding choices among different types. We explore whether support for nuclear over wind energy at the state level depends on how people assess the impact of these energy sources on health, local jobs, landscape disruption, and the stability of the electricity supply. Importantly, we seek to understand where people physically reside (and their experience of existing energy possibilities) might influence their energy policy preferences. We estimate multiple regression models with OLS with our original survey data of a representative sample of Washington residents (n = 844). We find that the physical proximity to existing energy facilities does not influence support for nuclear over wind energy. However, this support is shaped by the importance respondents attach to health (-), jobs (-), landscapes (+), and supply stability (+) dimensions of energy source. Moreover, the physical proximity to existing energy facilities moderates the importance respondents attach to these dimensions.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284208 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 84208&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0284208

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284208

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().