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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320010085 Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and safety risks to electricity generation: An explorative interview study in Switzerland Article in Journal of Risk Research · September 2017 DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2017.1391320 CITATIONS 0 READS 179 3 authors: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Joint Activity Scenarios & Modelling (JASM) View project Futuragua: building resilience to drought in socio-ecological systems View project Sandra Volken Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil 2 PUBLICATIONS 0 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Gabrielle Wong-Parodi Carnegie Mellon University 43 PUBLICATIONS 365 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Evelina Trutnevyte University of Geneva 41 PUBLICATIONS 513 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Evelina Trutnevyte on 24 September 2017. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320010085

Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and safety risks to

electricity generation: An explorative interview study in Switzerland

Article  in  Journal of Risk Research · September 2017

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2017.1391320

CITATIONS

0READS

179

3 authors:

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Joint Activity Scenarios & Modelling (JASM) View project

Futuragua: building resilience to drought in socio-ecological systems View project

Sandra Volken

Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil

2 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Gabrielle Wong-Parodi

Carnegie Mellon University

43 PUBLICATIONS   365 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Evelina Trutnevyte

University of Geneva

41 PUBLICATIONS   513 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Evelina Trutnevyte on 24 September 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Page 2: Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and … · 2019. 9. 19. · Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and safety risks to electricity generation:

Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and safety

risks to electricity generation: An explorative interview study in

Switzerland

Sandra Volken1*, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi2, Evelina Trutnevyte1

1Department of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS), USYS Transdisciplinarity

Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

2Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), Carnegie Mellon University

(CMU), Pittsburgh, USA

* Corresponding author, [email protected], +41 44 632 30 81, ETH Zurich,

Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Citation:

Volken, S., Wong-Parodi G., Trutnevyte E., 2017. Public awareness and perception of

environmental, health and safety risks to electricity generation: An explorative

interview study in Switzerland. Journal of Risk Research; forthcoming.

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Public awareness and perception of environmental, health and safety

risks related to electricity generation: An explorative interview study

in Switzerland

Well-informed public preferences are key to enabling successful and sustainable

energy transitions worldwide. However, limited explorative evidence exists on

what the public already knows and wants to know about the electricity generation

technologies and their Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) risks.

Understanding these issues is important for preparing informational materials and

facilitating formation of informed preferences. We present results of an

explorative interview study with 12 Swiss people. Despite the public debate on

energy in Switzerland, we still identify significant awareness and knowledge

gaps as well as misconceptions related to both technologies and their EHS risks.

For accidental risks, the people tend to think beyond probabilities and

consequences and consider further aspects, such as risk controllability and trust in

experts and authorities. Most importantly, we find that people are able and tend

to think of the electricity system as a whole portfolio: they actively realize the

need to deploy multiple electricity technologies and accept some of the EHS

risks. We conclude with concrete recommendations for preparing informational

materials on electricity sector transitions in Switzerland and elsewhere. We also

argue that future social research on energy should pay more attention to public

perception of whole technology portfolios rather than single technologies.

Keywords: technology acceptance; public preferences; energy technology risks;

risk communication

Introduction

Global electricity demand is increasing and electricity generation portfolios worldwide

are expected to undergo major changes driven by ambitious carbon dioxide reduction

goals (EIA 2016, 81), such as in the European Union (EC 2011, 6), the UK

(Government 2009), or Denmark (Danish Ministry of Climate 2012). The most common

strategy to attain these reductions advocates that a great part of total energy supply has

to be switched to electricity and almost completely provided by low-carbon

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technologies (Williams et al. 2012, 53). In addition, a small number of countries, like

Germany and Switzerland, aim to phase-out nuclear power due to concerns over public

acceptance and increasing safety demands after the Fukushima Daichii accident (NEA

and IEA 2015, 5 and 22). In Switzerland, the stepwise nuclear phase-out requires

replacing around 30 % or 22 TWh (SFOE 2016) of the total Swiss electricity generation

portfolio with efficiency measures, new renewables, and imports from the European

electricity marked (SFOE 2013). These imports would be comprised to large extent by

combustible fuels and nuclear, as of March 13, 2017, the EU listed on its website.

Such restructuring within any country’s electricity portfolio will likely shift the

types of risks to the built and natural Environment, as well as human Health and Safety

(EHS), posed by the electricity generation. For example, the nuclear phase-out prevents

the risk of nuclear accidents, but technologies that are deployed as replacement, such as

deep geothermal energy (DGE) or (pumped-) storage hydro power, will pose other

kinds of risks, such as induced earthquakes or dam failures. Historical records suggest

that renewables and natural gas similarly pose EHS risks, including accidents during

maintenance of wind farms or explosions of methane storage tanks used for biomass

electricity production (2016, Hirschberg et al. 2016). Considering the full complement

of possible EHS impacts, including greenhouse-gas emissions and resource use, (Bauer

et al. 2012, Masanet et al. 2013), it is evident that no single technology performs best

across all aspects of potential harm to EHS. Therefore, a portfolio with multiple

technologies can at best be balanced by considering the tradeoffs between EHS

(Burgherr and Hirschberg 2014).

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The way the public perceives such EHS risks1 and makes risk tradeoffs

influences their preferences for and acceptance of specific technologies (Burgherr and

Hirschberg 2014, Perlaviciute and Steg 2014, Huijts, Molin, and Steg 2012). Especially

in Switzerland, with a direct democracy, public acceptance could critically inhibit or

facilitate new electricity generation projects locally, but also at national level (Devine-

Wright 2011, van Rijnsoever and Farla 2014, Demski et al. 2015, Wüstenhagen,

Wolsink, and Bürer 2007). For example, in a referendum in fall 2016, the Swiss public

voted against a premature nuclear phase-out (as of January 23, 2016, the Swiss Federal

Council describe on its website). In summer 2017, there will be another public vote on

the Energy Act that mandates efficiency improvements and deployment of new

renewables instead of nuclear power (as of March 13, 2017, the Swiss Federal Council

describe on its website). Therefore, it is of interest for energy project developers as well

as public administrations to understand people’s preferences, perceptions, and concerns.

The currently envisioned major electricity transition requires the deployment of

vast numbers of new renewable and low-carbon technologies that the public may not be

fully aware of or that will need to be sited in communities with no previous contact to

electricity generation. Thus, public perceptions of those technologies, their EHS risks

and the resulting technology preferences might not be well-informed (van Rijnsoever

and Farla 2014). Previous studies found that people hold different misconceptions about

electricity technologies: natural gas is perceived as renewable source, probably due to

1 Here, in line with [12], we define risk as a combination of the likelihood and the

severity of an uncertain negative EHS consequence of an electricity generation

technology and its associated activities. We define risk perception as an aggregate of

what risks people are concerned about, how they assess the probabilities and

consequences of these risks, and how they inform their assessments.

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the term ‘natural’ (Devine-Wright 2003); in carbon capture and storage, due to a lack of

knowledge about CO2 and storage mechanisms, the carbon dioxide is perceived as being

stored underground in the form of gas posing the risk of gas release (Wallquist,

Visschers, and Siegrist 2010), or nuclear power is perceived by some people as

contributing to climate change (Poortinga, Pidgeon, and Lorenzoni 2006). Due to this

unfamiliarity and even misconceptions, people express opinions that are based on

selective information (Fleishman, De Bruin, and Morgan 2010, van Rijnsoever and

Farla 2014). In contrast, comprehensively informed preferences would be expected to

be more consistent with people’s values and be more stable over time (Mayer, Bruine de

Bruin, and Morgan 2014, van Rijnsoever and Farla 2014, de Best-Waldhober, Daamen,

and Faaij 2009). How one could inform the public about electricity technologies and

elicit informed preferences has been subject to a substantial body of research. It has

been found that providing information can change people’s perception and acceptance

of the technology and related EHS risks (Hobman and Ashworth 2013, Wallquist,

Visschers, and Siegrist 2011, Huijts, Molin, and Steg 2012, Fleishman, De Bruin, and

Morgan 2010, Trutnevyte, Stauffacher, and Scholz 2011).

Previous research also explored how to best design informational material for

the public in order to convey risk issues most effectively, in terms of relevant content,

appropriate wording or ways to report probabilities (Bruine de Bruin, Mayer, and

Morgan 2015, Fischhoff and Davis 2014, Fischhoff, Brewer, and Downs 2011) and

visualize uncertainties (McInerny et al. 2014, Spiegelhalter, Pearson, and short 2011).

Whereas technical experts, for example, tend to take a quantitative approach to risk

assessment by calculating probabilities and consequences (Aven 2012), laypeople are

likely to take a broader approach as well as follow simpler heuristics (Fischhoff, Slovic,

and Lichtenstein 1982, Tversky and Kahneman 1974, Slovic 1987, Slovic et al. 2004).

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A well-designed informational material should therefore not ‘decide what people need

to know but respond to the questions of what people want to know’ (Renn 2005, page

57). To this end, Morgan and colleagues (Bruine de Bruin and Bostrom 2013, Morgan

et al. 2002) promote the usefulness of mental models interviews for the design of

effective informational material. The aim of these interviews is to listen to the target

audience in order to understand their information needs (Fleishman, De Bruin, and

Morgan 2010, Pidgeon and Fischhoff 2011), identify specific awareness and knowledge

gaps, as well as capture wording familiar to the target audience (Pidgeon and Fischhoff

2011). Pidgeon and Fischhoff (Pidgeon and Fischhoff 2011) refer to this concept by the

term ‘strategic listening’.

In Switzerland, previous research on public opinion and acceptance of electricity

technologies addressed nuclear power (Visschers, Keller, and Siegrist 2011, Siegrist and

Visschers 2013), nuclear waste repositories (Seidl et al. 2013), biomass and biogas

(Soland, Steimer, and Walter 2013, Schumacher and Schultmann 2017), carbon capture

an storage (2009, Wallquist, Visschers, and Siegrist 2010, Wallquist, Visschers, and

Siegrist 2011), run-of-river hydro power (Tabi and Wüstenhagen 2017), wind power

(Spiess et al. 2015, Walter 2014), and several types of technologies (Visschers and

Siegrist 2014, Trutnevyte, Stauffacher, and Scholz 2011, Rudolf et al. 2014). However,

the underlying awareness and perceptions of technologies and their EHS risks,

including perceived probabilities and consequences, uncertainties, and risk

controllability, remain under-investigated. There is also a need to further investigate

perception of whole portfolios of technologies instead of a single technology, and

investigate if and how people make tradeoffs between technologies (Fleishman, De

Bruin, and Morgan 2010, Demski et al. 2015, Pidgeon et al. 2014, van Rijnsoever and

Farla 2014, Trutnevyte, Stauffacher, and Scholz 2011).

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With our explorative interview study, we aim to address the aforementioned

knowledge gaps and contribute to a better understanding of the content and format of

informational material about electricity generation technologies and related accidental

EHS risks and negative operation EHS impacts for the Swiss public. We address the

following research questions:

•   RQ1: When reasoning about electricity technologies, what EHS risks and

negative operational EHS impacts do Swiss laypeople actively describe?

•   RQ2: On what basis, do the Swiss people estimate the probability and describe

consequences of EHS risks related to electricity technologies?

•   RQ3: What other factors besides EHS risks or negative operational EHS

impacts appear to be important?

•   RQ4: Do Swiss people think of tradeoffs between technologies, EHS risks and

other factors, and do they attempt to evaluate portfolios instead of single

technologies?

Materials and Method

By adapting the mental models approach (Bruine de Bruin and Bostrom 2013, Morgan

et al. 2002), we conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with members of the public

from the German-speaking part of Switzerland on their awareness, reasoning and

information needs about EHS risks related to the whole portfolio of electricity

technologies. We recruited people via personal contacts of family members or friends,

however, being sure that the interviewer did not know them personally. We followed a

purposive sampling method in order to gather a balanced quota of males and females,

rural and urban residents, various education levels (primary to higher education), age

(18 to > 65-year-old), and professional backgrounds. Each interview lasted 60 to 108

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min. Participants received a 50 CHF coupon as a reward.

The interview included 30 open-ended questions on factors that were found

relevant in previous research (Slovic 1987, Perlaviciute and Steg 2014, Huijts, Molin,

and Steg 2012), including:

•   Interest and familiarity with electricity production, perceived subjective

knowledge about the energy topics, and perception of the Swiss electricity

system and its change;

•   Objective knowledge and general perception of eight electricity generation

technologies: nuclear power, (pumped-) storage hydro power, run-of-river hydro

power, natural gas, deep geothermal energy, solar photovoltaics, wind power,

biomass and biogas;

•   Awareness and perception of EHS risk types, including perceived probability,

consequences, and risk controllability. Under the term “risk type”, we include as

well any cause that can trigger an accident or event that can follow after an

accident;

•   Trust, responsibility and perceived confidence in expert knowledge;

•   Concern and acceptance of technologies and EHS risks.

After a brief introduction to the project and an initial discussion of the electricity

technologies that are known to the interviewee, a short description and photos of the

technologies, as well as a list of EHS categories, including buildings and infrastructure,

flora and fauna, or injuries and fatalities, were provided to guide the rest of the

interview. For every technology, participants were at first asked to name all kinds of

risks they perceived somehow to be posed by a specific technology. Further, the

interviewer asked if they thought that a specific risk could actually occur in

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Switzerland. If so, follow-up questions addressed perceived frequency or probability,

and potential consequences of the EHS risk.

Interviews were conducted in Swiss-German and transcribed in high-German. In

order to facilitate the analysis, one of two independent coders developed a codebook

based on open-coding of three transcripts as well as the interview guideline. The final

codebook comprised 53 codes, including subcodes. Each code could be used several

times in one interview. All 12 transcripts were coded by the first coder according to

these final 53 codes. No new codes where established. A second, undergraduate coder

partly coded each transcript. An assessment of inter-coder reliability found percentage

agreement of 98.2% and a Cohen’s kappa value of 0.66. Targeted queries were then

used to filter the interview material for analysis.

Results and discussion

Awareness of EHS risks and impacts related to electricity generation

technologies

We asked participants to describe risks to EHS (referred to as risks), posed by each

electricity generation technology. Table 1 shows people’s awareness and perceptions of

the risks. Participants also mentioned a similarly broad range of negative operational

EHS impacts (further referred to as impacts), indicating awareness of the different

nature of risks compared to impacts (Table 1). Any informational material should

therefore include both EHS risks and negative operational impacts and not be limited to

the one of them.

Table 1. EHS risks and negative operational EHS impacts that were actively mentioned

by the participants before the interviewer mentioned them. The number in parentheses

indicates how many participants mentioned it at least once (maximum of N=12).

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Technology EHS risks Negative operational EHS impacts

Nuclear power

General (accident, something happens,

Fukushima, something breaks) (12)

Terror attack on power plant (6), on disposal

site (1)

Cracks in power plant or reactor (5), in disposal

container (1)

Risks due to plant’s age (5)

Leak at power plant [4], at disposal sites (1)

Earthquake at power plant sites (2), at disposal

sites (2)

Explosion (3)

Airplane (2)

Storm (2)

Wave (Fukushima) (1)

Other environmental hazards (1)

Reactor dismantling (1)

Loss of control (1)

Meltdown (1)

Disposal site (1)

Uranium enrichment (1)

Disposal tanks leak (2)

Health risk (cancer) close to disposal sites (2)

Radioactive radiation at disposal sites (1)

General, harm (1)

Impact on ground water at disposal sites (1)

Illegal disposal (1)

Transportation (1)

Uranium mining, health risk (1)

Impact on water temperature (1)

Cables, vibrations (1)

(Pumped-) storage

hydropower

Break of dam (6), due to earthquakes or

landslides (2) or pressure of water (2)

Overspill due to heavy rainfall (1)

Terror attack (2)

Insufficient maintenance (1)

Airplane crash (1)

Impact on landscapes (4)

Impact on villages (4)

Impacts on animals (3)

Impact on nature (3)

Change of rivers (1)

Deep geothermal

energy

Earthquake (7)

Fire (2)

Explosion (1)

Volcanic eruption (1)

Instability of area (1)

Economic risk if project fails (1)

Imbalance (temperature) (4)

Impact on plants and environment (3)

Unknown risks (3)

Impact on ground, tensions (2)

Noise (2)

Impact of chemicals (1), provided chemicals are

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Drill into something (1)

General (1)

Machine breaks during drilling (1)

used (1)

Space (1)

Vapors released from the ground (1)

Vibrations (survey) (1)

Impacts on groundwater (1)

Natural gas

Explosion (6)

Leakage (6)

Fire (1)

General (1)

Unknown effect on nature (1)

CO2 emissions (but carbon capture and storage is

possible) (1)

Space, pipelines (1)

Run-of-river

hydropower

Overspill (1) due to a vast amount of water

Falling into the water (2)

General (e.g. something breaks) (1)

Human mistake causing a flood (1)

Drift wood (1)

Uncontrolled operation (1)

Explosion or fire (1)

Impact on fishes, other animals (4)

Impact on landscape (2)

Change of rivers (2)

Biomass and Biogas

Explosion (4)

Leakage (4)

Fire (1)

Poisonous inside (1)

General (e.g. something breaks) (1)

Competition with food production (1)

Impact on nature due to use of natural resources (1)

Poisonous (1)

Transportation of biomass (not ecological) (1)

Competition with wood heating (1)

Waste potentially hazardous (1)

Wind power

Break of rotor blades due to storm (1)

Out of a construction mistake (1)

Fire (1)

Paraglider accidents (1)

Impacts on bats and birds (4)

Noise (3)

Impact on nature (2), on forest (1)

Impact on landscape (1)

Similar impact on wind as heat extraction (DGE)

on ground (1)

Missing wind for pollination (1)

Conflict with heritage protection (1)

Space required (1)

Food production (conflict about agricultural area)

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(1)

Solar photovoltaics

Explosions (1)

Fire (1)

Short circuit (1)

Fall on somebody’s head (1)

Blind transport users (1)

Weather damage (1)

Disposal, harmful (2), unsolved (1)

Impact on grid stability (2)

Production, health (1)

Heritage protection (1)

Figure 1 shows the total number of EHS risks and impacts our sample was aware of and

the total number of first-time references to those risks and impacts (mentions) on their

own, without prompting from the interviewer. For example, our participants referred to

52 nuclear-related risks of which 20 where unique. They described 10 different nuclear-

related negative operational impacts in total 12 references. To a less extent, participants

made reference to deep geothermal energy, (pumped-) storage hydro power, and natural

gas risks. Negative operational impacts they referenced pertained primarily to deep

geothermal energy and wind power.

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Figure 1. Number of EHS risks and negative operational impacts actively mentioned by

all participants before the interviewer mentioned them. The number of risks and impacts

indicates how many different types of risks or negative operational impacts where

actively mentioned. The number of references (mentions) about risks and negative

operational impacts shows how often at least once any participant mentioned one or

several of that risks or impacts (see Table 1, sum of number in parentheses).

Table 1 reveals some active awareness gaps. For example, only one participant

mentioned CO2 emissions related to natural gas, and no one referred to local air

pollution related to biomass and biogas (Bauer et al. 2012, Masanet et al. 2013). Only

three participants mentioned accident risks related to wind power plants, even though

accidents causing few fatalities are comparatively frequent (Sovacool et al. 2016). Only

one participant mentioned the risk of overspill of hydro dams due to extreme rainfall-

related risks. Interestingly, for both risks as well as negative operational impacts some

misconceptions were also identified. For example, related to wind power or deep

geothermal energy:

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‘… wind is used up and calm remains… If there is a farmer behind a wind power

plant, who grows apple trees and wants the apple trees to be pollinated by wind and

there is no wind… this is just an example. Could be that this has impacts on

vegetation and animals [ID 7].’

‘When I imagine that it is drilled into the earth crust [for deep geothermal], that’s

almost like a balloon that bursts… or like a small volcanic eruption [ID 7].’

‘This heat is extracted from the ground. I just have the feeling that the ground

would become colder… just like it happens with ocean currents… And then just

sometimes no more trees grow in the vicinity of the power plants… In Germany,

they have already discovered that nothing can grow anymore close to it [ID 4].’

In addition to providing some clues as to what people are aware of, Table 1 also shows

what risks or impacts people discussed, which are not often mentioned by technical

experts. For example, participants expressed concern about the disposal and production

of solar photovoltaic panels and related health effects or impacts on grid stability. When

considering deep geothermal energy, they mentioned the impacts of chemicals used or

the possibility of drilling into cables or pipes. With respect to biomass and biogas,

environmental harm due to biomass transportation and competition with agriculture or

heating was mentioned.

Participants also shared when they felt they did not know something or felt

uncertain about the extent of their knowledge. Participants most often referred to such a

lack of knowledge in relation to nuclear power, followed by natural gas, deep

geothermal energy, and to a smaller extent biomass and biogas. Interestingly, nuclear

power is the second most important source of electricity in Switzerland, which seems to

be in contrast with low levels of self-reported knowledge, including aspects of

functionality, risks, probabilities, consequences, or technology potentials. There were

also cases when participants asked the interviewer questions, for example on the type of

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waste of biomass and biogas power plants or the possibility to renovate a hydro dam.

All these knowledge gaps would need to be addressed in the informational material.

Perceived probabilities of EHS risks

In the interviews we investigated participants’ assessments of EHS risks following the

technical risk concept as probability (this section) times consequence (next section)

(Aven 2012). Appendix A (A.1. and A.2.) shows some examples of interviewees’

intuitive feelings about the individual as well as relative possibility of many EHS risks,

which they were able to describe using general expressions. Deep geothermal energy,

nuclear power and natural gas seem to be seen as most risky. It is important to note that

some of these perceptions are not consistent with actual historical data or calculations

(Sovacool et al. 2016). For example, probabilities of EHS risk related to hydropower,

wind power and photovoltaics are underestimated, whereas those related to nuclear

power and deep geothermal energy are overestimated. Only perceived EHS risks of

natural gas reflected actual or modelled risk as compared with Sovacool et al. (2016),

(Burgherr and Hirschberg 2014).

One plausible explanation for the observed disconnect between perceived and

actual probabilities of EHS could be, as Fischhoff and colleagues (Fischhoff, Slovic,

and Lichtenstein 1982) summarize, people’s insufficient cognitive capacity to assess

complex probabilities, which prompts them to rely on heuristics in order to simplify the

task. The characteristic of ‘dread’ and ‘unknown’ (Slovic 1987) and the availability

heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1974) may explain our participants’ overestimation

and underestimation of the probabilities of EHS risks. Indeed we found our participants

expressed ‘unknown’ as well as dread (next section) when reasoning about some risks.

Familiarity and experience with the technology or related EHS risks is repeatedly seen

in literature as relevant to people’s probability judgments in the context of availability

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and affect heuristics (Slovic et al. 2004). Although the link between familiarity and

probability judgements is complex, we found that known historical accidents – or lack

of known accidents – were linked to both low and higher probability estimates. For

example, in 2006 and 2013, two deep geothermal energy projects in Switzerland

induced earthquakes, which were highly covered in media (Stauffacher et al. 2015).

This type of media coverage may operate to enhance perceived risk due to familiarity

and higher cognitive availability (Bodemer and Gaissmaier 2015). Lack of subsequent

media attention may serve to signal reduced risk, although this may not in fact always

be the case (e.g. project ends or no new projects, hence no risk rather than less risk

during operations). For example:

‘… that (Basel geothermal project) was probably an exception, because otherwise

we do not hear anything about that. I think it was an exception because of the

ground conditions there [ID_1].’

In addition to the availability heuristic, our participants may have been subject to the

anchoring effect. For example, participants referred to analogous gas accidents when

talking about the EHS risks of natural gas, biomass and biogas (Renn 2005).

Figure 2 lists other factors that the interviewees refereed to, when discussing the

probabilities of EHS risks. One such factor that would need to be covered in

informational material was the cause of the EHS risk, such as the estimated likelihood

of a cause, such as human failure, natural hazards, terrorist attacks, or the level of the

cause that triggers the risk. At times participants expressed more or less accurate causal

relationships. For instance, the probability of a dam failure or overspill was related to

assumed probabilities of a human failure or a sufficiently strong mud slide. However,

the perceived probabilities of conjunctive events can be flawed (Tversky and Kahneman

1974), for example, when the likelihood of overspill or dam failure is insufficiently

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adjusted as compared to the likelihood of its cause (Tversky and Kahneman 1974).

Other examples are as follows:

‘... the probability that something happens at a hydro dam is lower than the

probability that something happens at a natural gas or nuclear power plant, because

the most likely cause for a risk is human failure and at a hydro dam there is less

technology that humans need to control and therefore less potential for human

failure [ID_5].’

‘... even if a mud slide or parts of a glacier fall into the reservoir, a huge amount of

material is used that something happens and there is still a distance to the top of the

dam [ID_5].’

Figure 2. Factors that the interviewees mentioned when estimating probabilities of EHS

risks.

Another factor that contributed to probability judgements was the concept that

something can happen anytime and nothing can be completely excluded. This could

reflect a lack of subjective knowledge or perceived lack of expert confidence, as well as

perceived severity of consequences no matter how unlikely they are. For example:

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‘You can’t completely exclude it (risk to (pumped-)storage hydro power). All the risks

are never completely excludable, for all power plants [ID_11].’

‘… No, nothing will happen (nuclear). But we anyway don’t want it in our backyard,

because it could somehow…it’s just that [ID_6].’

We therefore argue that informational material should also discuss experts’

(un)certainty about risks as well as the so-called remaining (or irreducible) risk.

However, a challenge remains here to know how people understand uncertainty and

how information about uncertainty should be conveyed (Fischhoff and Davis 2014,

Knoblauch, Stauffacher, and Trutnevyte 2017).

Previous studies suggest that trust in power plant operators and

authorities is critical for technology acceptance and risk perception (van Rijnsoever and

Farla 2014, Perlaviciute and Steg 2014, Huijts, Molin, and Steg 2012). In our

interviews, trust was also one of the most frequently discussed factors in relation to the

perception of probability, especially for low-probability high-consequence EHS risks of

(pumped-) storage hydropower and nuclear power. Our sample generally expressed

rather high levels of trust that may be unique to Switzerland, for example:

‘… but I am relatively confident that experts work on that and they control that and can

anticipate certain things and pre-intervene [ID_11].’ (Nuclear)

‘I am not concerned, because here (Switzerland) they do enough, operators and the

government and organizations work together, they control it and reduce the risk… they

don’t build it close to communities… and there are safety measurements [ID_3].’

(Pumped-storage hydropower)

Closely related to trust was the perceived controllability of EHS risks, determined by

technical specifications and perceived safety measures of a technology. This suggests

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that informational material should refer to available safety measures and controllability

of risks in terms of both avoiding the risk in the first place (i.e. reducing the probability)

and minimizing its consequences.

Perceived consequences of EHS risks

The factors that our interviewees referred to when reasoning about consequences are

shown in Figure 3. Some of these factors were in parts prompted by the interviewer

when motivating participants to think of the consequences in terms of severity, damage

categories (types of consequences), spatial extent, controllability and expert knowledge.

Nevertheless, we identified some additional factors, marked by an asterisk in Figure 3,

which were brought up by the interviewees themselves. Some of the major differences

between perceived consequences of technologies were related to these additional

factors, such as contamination, persistence, and delay effects:

‘… and genetic consequences on future generations are not even known yet [ID_7].’

(Nuclear)

‘… Here I would not want to plant my carrots anymore afterwards (nuclear), here I

would (pumped-storage hydropower), and here probably (natural gas) [ID_3].’

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Figure 3. Factors that the interviewees mentioned when reasoning about the

consequence dimension of EHS risks. Factors marked with an asterisk (*) were brought

up by the interviewees rather than asked by the interviewer.

The spatial extent, damage categories and severity of consequences were mentioned in

the interviews most often; Table 2 provides an overview. For nuclear power, spatial

extent and the type of adverse health effects belong to the major factors that make it

perceived significantly more severe than the second most impactful technology,

(pumped-) storage hydropower. Some interviewees, however, overestimated the

potential of nuclear power to destroy buildings and infrastructures (as of February 22,

2016 and 2017, the World Nuclear Association describe on its website). In contrast to

descriptions of consequences (Table 2) and to historical accident data (Burgherr and

Hirschberg 2014, Sovacool et al. 2016), (pumped-) storage hydropower interestingly

evoked only concerns of nature impacts, especially if further dams are built, or in terms

of living in close vicinity below a dam. The fact that the Swiss people associate high

benefits and positive emotions with hydropower that outweigh perceived costs could

explain this generally high acceptance (Visschers and Siegrist 2014, Rudolf et al. 2014).

However, it could also be that people accept it because of they perceive (pumped-)

storage hydropower is sited away from populations, is highly controllable, stably built,

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or, in line with Visschers and Siegrist (2014), the operators are trustworthy.

Table 2. Aggregated descriptions of the consequence dimension of major EHS risks

related to electricity generation technologies.

Technology   Spatial  extent   Damage  categories   Severity  

Nuclear  power  

•   Regional,  national,  or  even  international  extent  

•   Mostly  informed  by  what  happened  in  Fukushima  or  Chernobyl  and  the  radius  in  which  iodine  pills  where  distributed  in  Switzerland    

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Everything  destroyed,  including  buildings  and    infrastructures  

•   Natural  environment:  Everything  eradicated,  contaminated  ground,  impact  on  animals,  environment,  agriculture,  groundwater  and  rivers  

•   Human  health  and  safety:  Health  risk,  cancer,  impact  on  genetic  material,  evacuations,  fatalities  

•   Massive  damage,  great  consequences,  crazy,  huge  danger,  worst  things  could  happen,  enormous,  tragic    

•   Not  as  bad  in  Switzerland,  depends  on  type  of  risk  

•   Compared  to  other  technologies  much  worse  

(Pumped-­‐)  

storage  hydro  

power    

•   Regional,  up  to  100  kilometers,  of  flooding  

•   Affecting  valleys  or  villages,  caused  by  a  dam  break  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Everything  destroyed,  including    buildings  and  infrastructure  

•   Natural  environment:  Large  part  of  nature  damaged,  cleared,  flora  and  fauna,  huge  damage  to  nature,  no  damaged  soil,  no  impact  on  agriculture  

•   Human  health  and  safety:  Fatalities,  evacuations  

•   Greater,  many,  terrible  damage,  massively  destroyed,  disastrous,  depends  on  type  of  risk,  

•   Less  severe  than  nuclear  

Deep  

geothermal  

energy    

•   Local  consequences,  up  to  5  kilometers,  depending  on  the  underground  structures  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Houses  (slightly)  damaged  

•   Natural  environment:  Maybe  changes  structures  of  underground  layers  

•   Human  health  and  safety:  Can  cause  fatalities  or  no  fatalities,  no  damage,  not  felt  earthquakes  

•   Not  severe,  very  small  to  very  big  damage  

Natural  gas  

•   Local  consequences  depending  on  the  wind  direction  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Only  the  power  plant  

•   Natural  environment:  Hazardous  for  the  environment,  birds,  a  bit  of  forest  burnt,  no  long-­‐term  consequences  

•   Human  health  and  safety:  Gas  could  be  hazardous,  no  impact,  evacuation  of  power  plant  

•   Gas  leaks  would  not  be  funny,  great  damage,  catastrophe  of  limited  extent,  not  much  happens  

•   Not  as  tragic  as  nuclear,  but  worse  than  biomass  and  biogas,  and  deep  geothermal  energy  

Run-­‐of-­‐river   •   Alongside  the  river,    close  to  the  river  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Everything  alongside  the  river,  maybe  

-­‐  

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hydro  power   small  boats  •   Natural  environment:  -­‐  •   Human  health  and  safety:  

Could  cause  fatalities,  once  a  boy  drowned  

Biomass  and  

biogas  

•   Only  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  power  plant  or  maximally  100  meters  away  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Houses  damaged  

•   Natural  environment:  Poisoning  of  environment,  similar  to  CFCs  causing  ozone-­‐hole,  surrounding  forest  might  catch  fire  

•   Human  health  and  safety:  Suffocate,  similar  to  silos,  no  long-­‐term  health  consequences,  maybe  small  scale  evacuation  

•   Less  severe  than  biomass  and  biogas,  (pumped-­‐)  storage  hydro  power,  and  nuclear  

Wind    

•   Not  affecting  anything  except  the  power  plant  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Only  single  power  plants  

•   Natural  environment:  -­‐  •   Human  health  and  safety:  

Rotor  blade  that  falls  down  could  cause  a  fatality  

•   No  catastrophe,  less  severe  than  nuclear  

Solar  

photovoltaics  

•   Maybe  a  whole  building  if  it  burns  

•   Infrastructure,  buildings  and  economy:  Only  single  panels,  in  case  of  fire  maybe  whole  building  

•   Natural  environment:  -­‐  •   Human  health  and  safety:  If  

it  burns,  hazard  for  people,  could  blind  somebody  if  it  reflects,  snow  that  falls  down  is  no  hazard  worth  talking  about  

•   Less  severe  than  nuclear,  not  much  happens,  not  worth  talking  about  

For both low-probability high-consequence risks, such as a dam break or nuclear core

meltdown, as well as for high-probability low-consequence risks, such as induced

earthquakes, participants emphasized the lower importance of probabilities as compared

to the severity of consequences:

‘… but it’s not like houses would be destroyed or you would die… living close to a

hydro dam, I would see that different [ID_5].’ (Deep geothermal energy)

‘Knowing about very low probabilities would not change anything (in my perception of

nuclear power) [ID_5].’

Benefits, siting, technology potential and other factors

Besides EHS risks and negative operational EHS impacts, the interview participants

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also mentioned other factors about electricity generation technologies (Huijts, Molin,

and Steg 2012, Perlaviciute and Steg 2014), such as the waste recycling benefits of

biomass and biogas, resource efficiency of solar photovoltaics and wind, or the ability

of (pumped-) storage hydropower to store electricity. Perceived benefits could be even

more important than perceived risks for the public (Visschers, Keller, and Siegrist

2011). Other factors that the interviewees referred to were economic aspects,

independence from other countries, aesthetic aspects, immaturity of technologies, noise,

or waste.

Three other prominent factors were the siting of technologies and a

technology’s maximum potential for development in Switzerland. For example, some

participants thought that solar photovoltaics were only suitable for rooftops, whereas

others referred to vast solar fields in Germany. Some participants expressed the wish to

consider heritage protection, integrate the solar panels into a building’s architecture, and

restrict their coverage ratio. For wind power plants, some people thought that a single

plant would not affect the surroundings much, whereas others emphasized the negative

implications of whole wind parks on landscape view. There was a common perception

among the participants that wind power plants are built in the mountain regions, not

close to communities. The participants believed that there is no potential to site wind

power plants in the Swiss Mittelland or even generally in Switzerland, and thus they

should be located elsewhere in northern Europe. For nuclear power, as expected, the

participants mentioned the issues related to the final disposal of nuclear waste, including

the site selection process, for which they expressed low subjective knowledge and

uncertainty. In general, there were many statements about the distance of the power

plants to communities or nature. The highest acceptance was shown for solar

photovoltaics, built within the communities.

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Participants often referred to the technology potential in Switzerland, especially

when discussing nuclear power or its planned phase-out. A lot of uncertainty,

contradictory and ambivalent opinions were expressed as to whether the electricity

provided by nuclear could be realistically replaced by other technologies. As other

countries still rely on nuclear power, some participants thought it makes little sense to

phase out nuclear in Switzerland for the sake of reducing the EHS risks. They thought

that Switzerland would be exposed to nuclear risk by other countries, where operators

were also perceived less trustworthy and reliable.

Here we conclude that informational material on electricity generation

technologies should also include information on technology potential and siting issues

in order to reduce misconceptions and knowledge gaps as much as possible.

Informational material should balance between risk information and other relevant

aspects, such as negative operational impacts, benefits, or technical specifications

(Fleishman, De Bruin, and Morgan 2010, Mayer, Bruine de Bruin, and Morgan 2014).

Portfolio thinking and tradeoff-making between technologies

Most existing studies on public opinions of electricity generation focus on the public’s

perceptions and acceptance of individual technologies, (c.f. Visschers, Keller, and

Siegrist 2011, Siegrist and Visschers 2013, Soland, Steimer, and Walter 2013,

Schumacher and Schultmann 2017, Wallquist, Visschers, and Siegrist 2009, Tabi and

Wüstenhagen 2017, Spiess et al. 2015, Walter 2014, Wallquist, Visschers, and Siegrist

2011) rather than a suite of technologies in a portfolio. Some (Fleishman, De Bruin, and

Morgan 2010, Demski et al. 2015, Pidgeon et al. 2014, van Rijnsoever and Farla 2014,

Trutnevyte, Stauffacher, and Scholz 2011) have argued the necessity of adopting a

‘portfolio perspective’ as this is more reflective of how electricity demand is met in

practice. Despite this, researchers have yet to explore the extent to which non-experts

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think in terms of portfolios. Our interviews indicate that people have some

understanding of and think about the electricity system as an inter-connected network of

power plants, imports, and demand. For example, the nuclear phase-out was perceived

to require increasing the capacity of other technologies or imports to cover the demand.

The participants also attempted to value such tradeoffs and acknowledged the need to

decide which aspects are more important than others:

‘…if nuclear power could be replaced by one of these, then good, but it depends a bit on

how the replacement would look like and if the rest needs to be imported [ID_2].’

‘If we exclude nuclear and coal, we cannot all drive an electric car [ID_1].’

Even more, some participants applied this portfolio thinking to trading off the

advantages, EHS risks and negative operation impacts of multiple technologies:

‘… with only renewables we cannot cover the whole demand, we need the big and risky

technologies [ID_2].’

‘If we depend on only one technology, the risk is too high… [ID_11].’

‘That will be funny, when everyone has solar panels on their roof, because the system

was not built for that [ID_6].’

‘… natural gas is something that can be stored easily. And water. And when we need it,

it can be converted to electricity [ID_7].’

‘… if we use wood for electricity, we cannot use it for heating [ID_6].’ (Biomass and

biogas)

‘…it’s only a potential risk, the real risk of CO2 emissions have priority [ID_9].’

(Nuclear)

‘…we have to live with that (induced earthquakes)… we can not have everything

[ID_5].’ (Deep geothermal energy)

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Generally, such tradeoff-making indicates that people want to make decisions in the

context of other technologies and different attributes of technologies (Bruine de Bruin,

Mayer, and Morgan 2015). As the perceived technology potential in Switzerland is also

a factor people consider, at least on the abstract level, it is meaningful to elicit public

preferences for technology portfolios rather than single technologies. Furthermore, this

finding that people adopt portfolio thinking also supports the idea of Pidgeon and

colleagues (Demski et al. 2015, Pidgeon et al. 2014) that people prefer to make energy

decisions in the context that includes multiple technologies, as well as regulations,

policies, infrastructures, and other energy objectives, such as supply security.

Generalizability of the results

Our exploratory study provides highly relevant insights into people’s thoughts,

understanding and reasoning about EHS risks and negative operational EHS impacts

related to electricity generation technologies in Switzerland. Such insights remain

hidden in large representative surveys, as participants do neither have the opportunity to

express new ideas and ways of thinking nor to clarify their positions. This exploratory

study is the first step in understanding the intended audience, for developing

informational materials about EHS effects of electricity generation to facilitate

formation of informed public preferences in Switzerland.

Some of our findings are specific to Switzerland, such as high trust in

authorities, familiarity with hydro power and nuclear power, concerns over nuclear

phase-out, high share of import, and media coverage of seismicity induced by deep

geothermal energy. All these elements might not have been discovered in similar studies

elsewhere. However, our findings on the relevance of both accident EHS risks and

operational impacts, public view to risks beyond probabilities and consequences only,

and portfolio thinking are likely to be found in other countries too. In particular, our

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finding that our participants in general tended to discuss technologies in relation to one

another rather than to talk about technologies in isolation without our prompting.

Interestingly, despite energy topics being extensively discussed in the Swiss public,

especially in relation to the recent and upcoming energy-related referendums, we still

find multiple misconceptions and awareness gaps. We thus believe that such

misconceptions and awareness gaps could also be found in other countries and be even

more prevalent, if the energy discussions are at earlier stages.

Several limitations of this study shall be kept in mind when generalizing

the results. First, after the open discussion at the start of the interview, we provided our

interviewees with descriptions of technologies, technology photographs, and damage

categories. This information could have influenced the participants’ responses. The

interviews were also semi-structured and not completely open and purely explorative.

Nevertheless, the benefit of providing the information was that we had a common

understanding of the technologies and could cover more aspects of EHS risks and

negative operational impacts, such as consequences on infrastructure or evacuations.

Second, as our focus was to investigate perception of EHS risks and negative

consequences related to electricity generation, we only marginally covered perceived

benefits or other factors that matter, such as aesthetic impacts, costs, or supply security.

However, our participants mentioned additional factors unprompted, such as preference

for a portfolio of technologies rather than a single technology or importance of

technology potential in Switzerland. Third, our study provides only a snapshot of

current views in the public. These views should be considered in light of the fact that

there have not been many accidents related to electricity generation or large-scale

industrial plants in recent years. Accidents, such as another core meltdown in a nuclear

plant or hydropower dam failure in Europe could change people’s perception of EHS

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risks as well as the importance of these risks for preferences and acceptance

(Perlaviciute and Steg 2014). Previous research in Switzerland, however, found only

minor impacts of the nuclear accident in Fukushima on technology acceptance (Siegrist

and Visschers 2013).

Conclusions

This paper reported results from an explorative interview study with 12 lay people in

Switzerland on their awareness, perceptions and acceptance of environmental, health

and safety (EHS) risks and negative operation impacts posed by eight electricity

generation technologies. Following the mental models approach (Morgan et al. 2002),

these results will guide us in the development of informational material for the Swiss

public on the EHS risk and operational impacts related to the Swiss electricity sector

transition in the decades ahead.

We found that the interviewees actively referred to a similarly high number of

accidental EHS risks and negative operational impacts and could distinguish between

the two easily. Therefore, any informational material should cover both accidental and

negative operational EHS impacts and not only one type. We also identified multiple

subjective awareness gaps and misconceptions related to the type of EHS risks and

operational impacts, probabilities (frequencies) and consequences. These knowledge

gaps and misconceptions should be especially addressed in the informational material.

We found that the interviewees had difficulties in estimating probabilities of specific

EHS risks and tended to overestimate probabilities of nuclear and deep geothermal

energy risk, but underestimate those of hydropower and wind power. The consequence

dimension of EHS risks, including the spatial extent, damage categories, immediacy,

persistence and delay effects, was perceived by our interviewees more important than

probabilities. The consequences of EHS risks were likewise at times marked by

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misconceptions. At times, the interviewees reasoned about probabilities using the fact

that risks are unknown to experts. Nevertheless, for actual (lack of) concern about risks,

the comparatively high level of trust in experts and authorities seemed to prevail. Still,

the interviewees were reluctant to completely exclude any possibility of the remaining

risk of unknowns, which might imply that probabilities, however small, still feed into

people’s preferences and decisions.

Most importantly, we found that our interviewees had an ability and tendency to

perceive the electricity system as an entirety of electricity demand, multiple

technologies (limited by maximum potentials), electricity imports and other

infrastructures. The interviewees actively made tradeoffs between technologies, related

EHS risks, negative operational impacts and other factors. They often demonstrated

rather ambivalent opinions about technologies, acknowledging both risks and benefits,

and showing willingness and awareness of the necessity to accept certain risks and

drawbacks.

Future research should further investigate the public awareness, perceptions and

misconceptions of EHS risks, negative operational impacts, and other factors, especially

using a representative survey to quantify the prevalence of views that we have

discovered in this interview study. On this basis, the aforementioned informational

material should then be developed, tested, and applied to facilitate the formation of

informed preferences for electricity generation technologies in Switzerland. In

particular, the focus should be put not on eliciting informed public preferences for

single generation technologies, but on helping lay people to understand the complexities

inherent in portfolios of multiple technologies and help make informed portfolio

judgements. We think that further public discourses, availability of balanced

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information, and assisted tradeoff making are key to publically acceptable and thus

successful energy transition in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Energy

Grant No. 160563. The authors thank Stefan Klenke for his help with coding the

interviews and the members of the ETH USYS Transdisciplinary Lab and Swiss

Competence Center for Energy Research – Supply of Electricity (SCCER-SoE) Task

4.1 “Risk, safety, and social acceptance” for discussions.

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