Balancing benefits and risks: Assessing willingness to accept compensation for clean energy facility siting in China-An examination of knowledge, attitudes, and practices.

Abstract

Provisions for compensation have been widely used to handle siting difficulties in many countries. However, neglecting the factors that influence the residents' willingness to accept compensation (WTA) for the siting of clean energy facilities for the long term has led to the failure of compensation, which could potentially cause stalemates or even conflicts in projects. Given the representativeness of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the siting of clean energy facilities, this study chose the siting of NPPs as a case study. Moreover, an extended knowledge-attitudes-practices (KAP) model was constructed to explore the key factors that affect the residents' WTA since this model excels at understanding individual behaviors. The results show that the WTA is extremely low. Knowledge has positive effects on attitudes, which is also the most significant predictive factor of the WTA. More knowledge leads to lower pollution perceptions but results in higher safety perceptions and pro-environmental values. Perceptions of safety and pollution mediate the relationship between knowledge and the WTA, but the mediating effects of pro-environmental values are not significant. The negative effects of pollution perceptions are greater than the positive effects of safety perceptions of WTA. These results may serve as a basis to improve public evaluation to handle crises in other countries and regions.