Whose energy systems? Ownership and social acceptance of of energy-system-related policies and technologies

This thesis explored the social acceptance of policies and technologies related to renewable energy systems by the public and other societal actors. Social acceptance of policies and technologies is a critical prerequisite for a successful energy transition and mitigation of climate change. Building on recent conceptual developments that emphasize the role of institutions in understanding processes of social acceptance, this thesis investigated various dimensions of social acceptance by considering the role of institutional frameworks of ownership and governance in Ireland. The introduction provides a literature review and contextualises the empirical work of this thesis. The core of the thesis is a collection of three empirical studies. The thesis ends with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the empirical work. The first study, based on the sociotechnical imaginaries approach, explored perspectives of different stakeholders on renewable energy ownership models and the extent to which these are contingent upon imaginaries of the public. Based on qualitative analysis of interviews with stakeholders, we propose that instrumental perspectives on ownership are grounded in an imaginary of the public as energy consumers, whereas perspectives on ownership as empowerment are based on an imaginary of the public as energy citizens. The subsequent two quantitative studies explored the role of individual-level differences in explaining public and community acceptance of policies and technologies in the context of ownership and governance structures. The second study compared the predictive capacities of individual and collective dimensions of psychological ownership over water systems in explaining public acceptance of water system management policies among users of three forms of water supply systems, whose formal ownership structures vary. The results demonstrated that the relationship between the two dimensions of psychological ownership and public acceptance of water management policies depends on the formal ownership structures of water supply systems. The third study explored the role of collective psychological ownership over renewable energy developments and place-technology fit in explaining community acceptance of top-down and bottom-up governance approaches to renewable energy developments. The results showed that community acceptance of renewable energy developments is higher under bottom-up than top-down governance approaches, because bottom-up approaches strengthen feelings of collective psychological ownership and perceptions of place-technology fit. Overall, the results indicate the importance of considering the imaginaries of different stakeholders about energy systems and the role of the public in energy systems to understand processes of social acceptance of energy-system-related policies and technologies. Additionally, the results demonstrate that the ownership and governance structures of utilities are important for understanding the psychological processes underlying public/community acceptance. The implications of these results for policy, particularly in relation to public participation in renewable energy developments, are discussed.