2. Social acceptance in the Nordic countries

In this section, we describe the concept of “social acceptance”, how it can be defined and measured, and what factors are known to influence the level of social acceptance.

As social acceptance has been conceptualized differently in the literatures on (local) acceptance for the deployment of renewable energy and for the (national) acceptance for environmental policy instruments, the concept is described separately for our two cases.

Broadly speaking, social acceptance for green transition technologies may be defined as “a favourable or positive response (including attitude, intention, behaviour and – where appropriate – use) relating to a proposed or in situ technology or socio-technical system by members of a given social unit (country or region, community or town and household, organization)” (Upham et al. 2015, p. 103).  

In the case of social acceptance of renewable energy innovations, social acceptance is described as multi-dimensional, dynamic, and produced at different scales (socio-political, market and community acceptance) (Wüstenhagen et al. 2007), see Box 1. Community acceptance is often the scale of social acceptance analyzed in relation to (local) renewable energy installations, while the scale of “socio-political acceptance” is more relevant to look at in the context of national climate policy.

Box 1: Different dimensions of social acceptance based on Wüstenhagen et al. (2007)

Socio-political acceptance: acceptance of technologies and policies by the general public, policy makers and key stakeholders. For example, acceptance of wind energy as a viable green energy solution.

Market acceptance: acceptance of an innovation by consumers, investors, and companies, and intra-firm acceptance.

Community acceptance: acceptance of a specific initiative at the local level, by local stakeholders, especially residents and local authorities. Relates to procedural and distributional justice and trust. Sometimes also called “local acceptance”.

While there is a lot of research relating to the social acceptance of wind power, the research on social acceptance for other policy instruments has not converged to the same degree on key concepts; instead, it is characterized by conceptual vagueness (Kyselá et al. 2019), making it e.g. difficult to compare empirical results. Some authors also distinguish between acceptance and acceptability. For example, in a literature review, Kyselá et al. (2019) suggest that acceptance is a distinct class of passive “evaluative responses to policies stemming from an underlying psychological tendency”, where acceptability “concerns an attitude before the implementation of a policy” and acceptance “concerns an attitude after”.

It is also important to note that the term social acceptance has been the subject of much criticism and debate, including questions about its policy and practical implications (Batel et al. 2013; Aitken 2010), and about the conceptual, definitional and methodological basis of research (e.g. Devine-Wright 2008; Hitzeroth & Megerle 2013; Upham et al. 2015). Batel et al. (2013) argue that social acceptance is only one of many possible reactions toward renewable energy technologies, whereby support, resistance and uncertainty are other such reactions (see also Fast 2013; Ricci et al. 2008).

Batel et al. (2013) cautions that the notion of ‘acceptance’, as opposed to ‘support’, normatively implies a top-down perspective on renewable energy technology implementation, where acceptance is a rather passive reaction to something which is proposed externally by authorities or companies to individuals and communities. To avoid the risk of wind energy projects being contested in the long term and undermining the sustainability of renewable energy technologies, their promotion should occur through “a multilateral and participatory approach, through which social actors are actively engaged in that process” (Batel et al. 2013). An extensive literature review on the social acceptance of wind energy also highlights that deliberative measures to include citizens and stakeholders in the process of developing wind energy projects are critical to community acceptance (Linnerud et al. 2018a). In addition to the environmental, economic and societal impacts of specific wind energy projects, community acceptance is influenced by factors such as distributional justice (costs and benefits), procedural justice (fair and participative decision-making process) and trust (in information and intentions of investors and actors from outside the community) (Linnerud et al. 2018a, b; Aakre et al. 2019; Leiren et al. 2020). 

As noted above, research on social acceptance – beyond community acceptance of wind power – is characterized by conceptual vagueness (Kyselá et al., 2019). As such, in the literature on attitudes towards policy instruments “the terms (acceptability, acceptance, and support) are used interchangeably and there are no specific, fitting concepts to measure them.” (Kyselá et al., 2019). Unsurprisingly, this results in a diversity of measures to analyze policy attitudes, as the examples and data presented in the wind power and fuel tax cases later in this report demonstrate.

Kyselá et al. (2019) provide a useful overview of the main categories used in studies of public support/acceptance (See Table 1 below).

Table 1: Methods of measuring social acceptance from Kyselá et al. (2019)

Furthermore, respondents are faced with different types of policies in the studies: A single well-defined policy (e.g. a proposal to increase an existing fuel tax by a specified amount), more general policy descriptions (increased taxation of fossil fuels), or composite indices for multiple policies. This again makes comparisons between studies difficult.

Since the factors explaining the level of social acceptance of wind power are well known (see section below), methods and measurements are more consolidated. For example, conducting choice experiments is one of the established quantitative methods of measuring social acceptance for renewable energy projects (Vuichard et al. 2022). In a choice experiment, the surveyed population is presented with a range of alternative wind energy projects exhibiting different characteristics that are identified as important factors in the literature. This allows the researcher to identify the importance of specific factors for the level of social acceptance.

There is extensive literature on barriers and drivers of social acceptance of wind power, focusing on the possibilities and difficulties of implementing wind power plants (for a review, see Leiren et al. 2020). The wind power literature highlights, in particular, three factors: process, economic effects and impacts on nature and landscape. These are covered in more detail below.

First, the involvement of stakeholders, and how they are involved in the process of wind energy development, is important for social acceptance of wind energy (Linnerud et al. 2018b). Questions include: To what extent and how institutions, regulations, organization of development processes and communication contribute to including relevant stakeholders in the process? Relevant policy and corporate measures can increase transparency and inclusiveness, as well as local benefit sharing schemes, which also explains why there is an increasing interest in community energy (Standal et al. 2023). Moreover, while the social acceptance literature tends to focus on drivers and barriers of support, there is also evidence that drivers of acceptance might have unintended consequences for community cohesion and democratic engagement (Figari et al. 2024). If resistance turns to silence and lack of engagement, it might be worrisome for democracy. It highlights the importance of viewing outcomes of wind power projects in relation to inclusion in processes.

Second, researchers show that support is associated with the belief that development of wind energy will have positive economic consequences for the host community (Bidwell 2013). Such benefits are a key factor for promoting positive attitudes towards wind power (Toke et al. 2008). They include, for example, income from taxation, ownership, new infrastructure like roads or communication infrastructure, income from hosting workers during the building phase and other ripple effects. Similar conclusions have been found in research addressing the Nordic countries (Figari et al. 2024; Rygg 2012). For social acceptance, it is also important that the distribution of profits and burdens related to the wind power project are perceived as fair – if not, the result might as well be opposition (Rand and Hoen 2017).

A third important factor in determining social acceptance for wind power is its impact on climate, nature and landscape. While the potential of wind energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is an important argument for proponents of this technology (Anshelm 2016; Petrova 2013), it does not sufficiently explain support for deployment (Rand and Hoen 2017). Impacts on wildlife and nature conservation contribute to explaining community acceptance of wind energy (Rygg 2012; Slattery et al. 2012), primarily opposition to wind power. However, researchers also find that there is an ‘environmentification of arguments’ (Larsen et al. 2015), as people sometimes mask their actual motives for opposing a wind power project by nature/species protection rationales (Krug and Ohlhorst 2020).

There is also an increasing amount of literature addressing how residents’ acceptance of wind power changes over time. Studies suggest that people tend to be more positive towards wind power once a project has been built and they have gathered experiences with it (Wilson and Dyke 2016). Other studies are inconclusive as to whether living with wind power reduces or bolsters positive attitudes over time (Zerrahn 2017), as it depends on several factors, such as the number of turbines encountered daily (Jones et al. 2011; Ladenburg et al. 2013), and studies increasingly challenge the common assumption that experience with wind power means more positive attitudes in public perception (le Maitre 2024; Mills et al. 2019; Windemer 2023).

The literature on social acceptance of fuel prices or fuel taxes is less extensive than that of wind power, but it is growing rapidly. Literature reviews and meta-analyses, such as Bergquist et al. (2023) and Valencia et al. (2024), have identified a number of factors that consistently influence the level of public support for environmental taxes in general. These studies emphasize that fairness and perceived effectiveness are key determinants of public support for fuel taxes, as well as the use of the tax revenues. Below we explore in greater depth how each of these factors influence the level of social acceptance of (fuel) taxes.

Fairness frequently emerges as the most crucial concern for the introduction (or increase) of fuel tax policies (Bergquist et al. 2023). Kallbekken and Sælen (2011) highlight the following two issues relating to fairness: the perceived distributional fairness and the coerciveness of the instrument. However, among these, distributional fairness is most often the key concern. Distributional fairness relates to how the distribution of the costs and benefits of the tax (from avoided environmental damage and reduced congestion and noise to tax incidence and adaptation costs) are distributed across the population across dimensions such as income and geography. One aspect of this is that fuel taxes impact people living in rural areas where public transportation is not available, resulting in people being more dependent on car ownership (disproportionately more than urban residents). This issue was emphasized as a primary driver of lack of social acceptance in the online workshop on fuel taxes (held as part of the project). Furthermore, a fuel tax affects different income groups differently, as the share of fuel costs in their budgets differ, and the concern for the impact on low-income households can drive opposition to new or increased taxes.

The concern over coercion can contribute to opposition to fuel taxes if citizens feel the increased price reduces their mobility options, in particular if there are no good environmentally friendly alternatives, such as accessible public transportation.  

The second key factor is the perceived effectiveness of tax. The public is less likely to support a tax if they do not perceive it as effective, for example, in terms of reducing fuel use and thereby reducing emissions. While the perceived effectiveness of a tax is often a very strong predictor of the level of support, it may differ from the actual effectiveness. Different initiatives have been proposed to handle skepticism towards the effectiveness of a tax. One way is to give information about how a specific tax is effective in reducing emissions. Another is to highlight the use of tax revenues.

Earmarking tax revenue for environmental initiatives has consistently been shown to increase the level of support, as it can both improve the perception of the environmental benefits of the tax and improve trust in the government’s use of the revenues (Valencia et al. 2024). Dugstad et al. (2024) found clear evidence that earmarking revenues for climate (mitigation) projects would increase support, and that it would increase further “when parts of the revenues are used to reduce general income inequalities” (i.e. when it also addresses the distributional concerns).

Besides the abovementioned factors, individual specific factors also play a role in terms of the individual citizen's perception and support of a tax. Higher trust in government increases tax acceptance, particularly if there is confidence that the revenue will be used effectively and fairly; those with left-leaning ideologies tend to be more supportive of environmental taxes compared to their right-leaning counterparts. Populist attitudes and nativist attitudes (xenophobic nationalist) have been found to predict lower support. For example, the latter has been found to be among the strongest predictors of attitudes to CO₂ taxation in Norway (Sælen & Aasen 2023) as in Western European countries generally (Kulin, Johansson Sevä, & Dunlap 2021). Furthermore, support for taxes often varies by region, with urban residents generally showing more support for taxation than those in rural areas. Finally, individuals concerned about climate change are more inclined to support taxes aimed at reducing emissions.