Assessing energy misperception in Europe: evidence from the European social survey

ABSTRACT

The present study investigates the determinants of differences between public preferences for energy sources and the actual country-level energy mix (“dissatisfaction”). Nineteen European countries have been examined, drawing on data from the 2016 European Social Survey. The main findings are that trusting individuals express lower dissatisfaction with the share of renewable energy sources and greater dissatisfaction with the share of fossil fuels and nuclear power; and individuals who are worried about energy security expressed an inflated preference for programmable energy sources (e.g. fossil fuels and nuclear power). The implications of the findings and the importance of public energy preferences for shaping policy views are briefly discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy
• public preferences
• dissatisfaction
• European social survey
• renewable
• trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ For a detailed discussion of these factors, see Hazboun and Boudet (2020).

² Appendix 1 reports additional information on the selected ESS questions.

³ In the Eurostat dataset, coal energy included hard coal, brown coal, and peat secondary coal products, such as coke, coal tar, patent fuel, BKB, and peat products.

⁴ Appendix 6 provides a table with the correlated coefficients between factor and variables.

⁵ For a detailed explanation, see Table 4, section 2.3.:

⁶ The empirical analysis also included control variables (i.e. age, gender, and education), for which we did not formulate specific hypotheses.

⁷ See McFadden, Machina, and Baron (1999) and Gigerenzer and Gassmaier (2011) on framing and saliency effects.

⁸ This may be mediated by individuals’ political orientation (see Section 2.3.4) and the political level at which energy policy is determined and implemented (e.g. individuals may find it easier to trust local municipalities than the European Parliament).

⁹ A genuine political challenge is created when “left collectives” envisage strategies to build new political habits grounded in an eco-imperative to protect the environment and produce energy equality across the globe (Szeman and Diamanti, 2017).