Influence of trust in institutions on public acceptance of nuclear power from a historical context across nuclear countries

Abstract

Several studies have tried to determine what is behind peoples’ attitudes to different energy sources and their overall rather negative opinion on nuclear power. The issue of public perception of nuclear power has been going on for decades. Recently it gained even greater interest thanks to the support of the UK governmental nuclear industrial strategy to promote and support nuclear growth. Nuclear power is negatively influenced by events from the past such as nuclear accidents and connection of nuclear power with cold war and the use of nuclear bombs. As one of many other factors, the level of trust in authorities is perceived to influence the opposition or support for nuclear power. This study aims at analyzing data on trust in four main institutions (government, businesses, media and non-governmental organizations) from a historical perspective in several nuclear countries and finding evidence for relationship between trust in authorities and support for nuclear power. Structural Equation Modelling and Multiple Regression Analysis have been used to analyze data Structural Equation modelling requires a large sample set to provide meaningful results, therefore performance can deteriorate when sample size reduces. Hence, Multiple Regression analysis has been carried out. Results from Multiple Regression analysis did not prove that the trust in institutions is significant predictor of support for nuclear power. Although around 55% of variance in support for nuclear was explained by trust institutions in UK as well as in USA case. Large sample size is required to authenticate model and obtain more robust results. It is likely that Multiple Regression analysis will be used for future data analyses when more data will be available.