Developing an assessment scale for public awareness of hydrogen energy

Abstract

Sustainable energy technologies stand out globally due to the increasing energy demand in last decades. Hydrogen energy (HE) provides a sustainable solution to meet this demand. Achieving sustainable HE goals and solutions fundamentally depend on increasing people’s knowledge and awareness. In this context, evaluating public awareness via a technical and validated scale is vital. The study aims to develop an assessment scale to measure public awareness of HE. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied for item reduction via SPSS 26 and Jamovi 2.3 while confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was utilized for item validation using AMOS 26. As a result, an assessment scale consisting of three factors which were named demand and benefit, economic and environmental with 10 items were determined. This validated scale could be preferred to assess public awareness of HE by policymakers, researchers energy sector enterprises, and intermediary associations to constitute their sustainable energy targets and desired solutions. This scale developed specifically for HE energy will provide an important input for all countries which are planning to revise or reconstruct their HE policies in a short term. Moreover, researchers could utilize the scale to explore the relationship between public awareness and other factors which influence energy policies.