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Are Citizens Ready to Make an Environmental Effort? A Study of the Social Acceptability of Biogas in France

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Abstract

Despite the potential benefits of anaerobic digestion in the context of climate change and the need to move towards energy transition, there is a lot of resistance to biogas projects. Using a contingent valuation method, we test the extent to which the socio-economic characteristics of populations influence the environmental effort that people are willing to make for the deployment of biogas in a French region. Our results show that young people and people familiar with the biogas process are more inclined to develop biogas. We also highlight that the educational and location aspects should not be neglected in order to increase environmental effort and promote the adoption and development of biogas.

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Notes

  1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en.

  2. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal/repowereu-affordable-secure-and-sustainable-energy-europe_en.

  3. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD%3A2022%3A230%3AFIN&qid=1653033922121.

  4. https://www.senat.fr/fileadmin/Fichiers/Images/redaction_multimedia/2021/2021-Documents_PDF/20211005_MI_Methanisation_dossier_de_presse.pdf.

  5. https://www.ifop.com/publication/les-francais-et-les-energies-renouvelables-3/.

  6. The principle of NIMBY can be defined according to Lake (1996) as a syndrome in which people oppose facilities with negative externalities only because they are built in their immediate vicinity. These nimbysites are then labelled as selfish (do not take into account the common good and general interest), irrational (react emotionally and not rationally), and ignorant (are not able to understand the need to build such facilities).

  7. The federal Environment Protection Agency was involved in the development of the CEM.

  8. Equivalently, we can also speak of the Consent to Receive (CAR): ‘Willingness to accept’, how much would the individual have to give to compensate for the decrease of a good?.

  9. The Report of the NOAA Panel on Contingent Valuation was published in January 1993 in Federal Register 4601 (15 January 1993). The experts in charge of this expert work on the validity of the CME are Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, Paul Portney, Edward Leamer, Roy Radner (economists) and Howard Schuman (sociologist) (all advocates of the method).

  10. For the Probit: P (Y = 1|X) = F(X’b), F(.) is the distribution function of a standard normal distribution. In the regression calculation, we voluntarily omitted the following two variables due to lack of observations: CSP (Farmer) (Suburban).

  11. For the level of education, see: https://publication.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/eesr/10EN/EESR10EN_Annexe_8-levels_of_educational_attainment.php.

  12. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/citizens/citizen-support-climate-action_en.

  13. It should be noted that, to our knowledge, there is no article that has evaluated the rural/urban differences in terms of the NIMBY phenomenon.

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Acknowledgements

The data used in this article were collected under the supervision of the team that designed the questionnaire, Olivier Beaumais (UNormandy), R. Crastes-dit-Sourd (ULeeds), Dimitri Laroutis (Esc Amiens) and Patrice Lepelletier and Salima Taïbi (UniLassale).

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  1. EM Normandie Business School, Métis Lab, Le Havre, France

    Sebastien Bourdin & Angélique Chassy

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  1. Sebastien Bourdin
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Correspondence to Angélique Chassy.

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Bourdin, S., Chassy, A. Are Citizens Ready to Make an Environmental Effort? A Study of the Social Acceptability of Biogas in France. Environmental Management 71, 1228–1239 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01779-5

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