A public administration perspective on wind power development: decision-making logic of local government officials

ABSTRACT

Onshore wind power has experienced decades of controversies and conflicts between national policies and ambitions for development and local government and community opposition. This discrepancy has spurred extensive studies on economic, socio-cultural and environmental variables of (lack of) social acceptance. To understand controversies surrounding wind power development there is a need to investigate how decision-making is shaped by various factors in local governments affected by wind power. This paper develops a public administration perspective related to key assumptions of social acceptance theory and examines how different factors interact and mutually affect each other in local decision-making logic. We suggest an integrated analytical model that delineates three types of decision-making logic among local government officials: a logic of consequences, a logic of trajectory and a logic of appropriateness. As such we highlight the importance of public administration decision-making as a pivotal component of wind power development. This study is informed by interviews with municipal political and administrative leaders in Norway. The analysis shows that local decision-making logic is shaped by a reciprocation between considerations of socio-economic benefits (consequences), by past procedural experiences with energy development (trajectory) and by linkages to community, place and nature (appropriateness).

KEYWORDS:

• Wind power
• decision-making behaviour
• governance
• local government
• renewable energy
• social acceptance

Disclosure statement

The research leading up to these results had been partly funded by the non-profit industry organization Renewable Norway, and partly by WINPLAN project at the University of Agder. This manuscript has been written independently and reflects only the opinions of the authors without any role of the industry.

Notes

1 For detailed information on proposed measurements, see https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/resource-rent-tax-on-onshore-wind-energy/id2929117/

2 See, for instance, Figved et al. (2019); Kleppe et al. (2021).

3 Due to informant anonymity, we are not able to provide a more detailed account of the municipalities, nor demographic profiles of the informants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Renewables Norway.