Public attitudes toward risk tradeoffs in energy policy choices. Final report

Technical Report · Sun Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/7042282· OSTI ID:7042282

Lindell, M K; Earle, T C

The emphasis that will be placed on each of a number of energy policy alternatives will be determined by the tradeoffs among many factors. Important among these factors are public preferences for different levels of power availability and risk to health and safety. Also important in determining support for energy alternatives is public perception of the consequences of those policies. To assess public perception and evaluation of these factors, a number of respondents were selected to answer questions about these issues. Respondents' judgements of the acceptability of thirty-six hypothetical energy policies were analyzed using two complementary methods, discriminant analysis and judgement analysis. The first method is a statistical procedure that examines how well task variables discriminate among groups of respondents. The second method is a procedure which is used to construct models that describe the judgement processes used by respondents. Results of the discriminant analysis showed that differences among respondents' judgements were strongly related to the TECH dimension but only weakly affected by RISK and PA. On the TECH dimension, antinuclear respondents indicated relative acceptance of conservation and solar and relative rejection of nuclear and coal. Although pronuclear respondents showed slightly greater support of nuclear and coal than conservation and solar. The six clusters differed most strongly on nuclear, followed by conservation and solar, then coal. The PA dimension had more effect on the judgements of pronuclear respondents than on the judgements of antinuclear respondents. The analysis of the data indicated that the judgements of pro- and antinuclear respondents were better fit by separate models. The antinuclear respondents placed a slightly greater weight on the more RISK part of the RISK dimension relative to the PA dimension.

• Research Organization: Battelle Human Affairs Research Center, Seattle, WA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC06-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 7042282
• Report Number(s): PNL-3402; B-HARC-411/80/025
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290200* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
293000 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Policy
Legislation
& Regulation
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
320900 -- Energy Conservation
Consumption
& Utilization-- Education & Public Relations-- (1980-)
AVAILABILITY
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
COAL
DATA ANALYSIS
ENERGY
ENERGY CONSERVATION
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
EVALUATION
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUCLEAR POWER
POWER
PUBLIC OPINION
RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES
RISK ASSESSMENT
SOLAR ENERGY
STATISTICAL MODELS
SURVEYS