ABSTRACT
Public perceptions are a significant limiting factor in energy transitions. These are sporadically investigated and inconsistently measured. Understanding perceptions of the acceptability of new energy policies, plans and projects remains the province of ad hoc discourse and politics outside of routine technical, legal and economic information for policy analyses. Political perceptions need to be regularly and systematically measured using political algorithms and evolving best practices.
A Model of Perceived Social Acceptability (MPSA) is proposed as a basis for solving this problem. It entails study and measurement of prevailing and influential social relations narratives, environmental perceptions and objective narratives as they interact to form ‘votes’ for or against renewable energy. The factors tend to interact within individuals and in regional populations to inform reliable monitoring of acceptability perceptions.
The MPSA describes how technical information affects two cognitive processes. One entails strategic and analytical thinking to construct objective narratives. The other emotional sympathetic thinking to construct social relations narratives centering on motives and trust. These experiential affects and narratives combine by a process of compounding or cancelation. Strongly negative or positive perceptions derive when all or most affects and biases have the same valence. Weaker or ambivalent perceptions result when valences are mixed.
