The changing face of public support for hydrogen technology explaining declining support among the Dutch (2008-2013)

The public acceptance of hydrogen technology has been the topic of many social-scientific studies. Whereas most of these studies rely on cross-sectional survey data, this paper analyses pooled data from representative surveys done in 2008 and in 2013, enabling to investigate whether and how exactly the public acceptance of hydrogen energy changed over time, and to study the reasons for this change to occur. I find that in the five years under survey, Dutch public opinion has become less favorable with respect to hydrogen technology. Structural equation modeling on the total sample, and a subsample of people who were included in both the 2008 as the 2013 sample revealed that this decline in acceptance of hydrogen technology can mainly be explained by a general decline in trust in science and technology that took place in the Netherlands in the period under observation. Keywords: Public acceptance, Hydrogen technology, Public perception, SEM, Public attitude