Public Risk Perceptions, Climate Change and the Reframing of UK Energy Policy in Britain, 2005

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The project consisted of undertaking a comprehensive empirical survey of public opinion towards future energy options for the UK, with a particular emphasis on attitudes towards nuclear power when placed in the context of climate change. The survey questionnaire consisted of 4 main sections. The first main section looked at climate change and nuclear power from a broad perspective, comparing these two with a range of other environmental and energy-related issues at different global/local scales. This section also examined attitudes towards various options for generating electricity. The second section specifically considered attitudes towards nuclear power. The third section examined attitudes towards climate change in more detail. Sections two and three contain a number of standardised questions that were aimed to measure general attitudes towards nuclear power and climate change, the perceived risks and benefits of the two issues, as well as questions on ambivalence, attitudinal certainty, and trust in risk regulation. In addition, the two sections contain a number of issue-specific questions. The fourth and final section of the questionnaire looked specifically at attitudes towards the reframing of nuclear power as a solution to climate change. This section contains questions that were designed to compare the risks of climate change with the risks of nuclear power, and attitudes towards different energy futures and options of electricity generation that might help to prevent climate change, using a split-sample technique. Although there are a range of one-off or tracker surveys and risk perception studies available that have asked about energy generation, nuclear energy, and climate change separately, the value of the current instrument is that it generates a database which allows responses to be compared across all three sets of issues. In addition there is no comparable existing survey which asks, in a comprehensive way, about the reframing question.Main Topics:The main topics covered were: energy futures; nuclear power; climate change; environmental issues; risk perception.