Description:
<jats:p>The article aims to explore citizens’ perceptual patterns underlying
the public’s view of the German energy transition. By reducing the complexity
of the public’s views to its main dimensions, the article contributes to a
deeper understanding of citizens’ reactions to transition projects such as the
German energy transition. This research is based on a German-wide representative
survey that included items covering different aspects concerning
the acceptance of energy technologies (trust in key actors, fairness, perceived
risks and benefits, etc.). In order to explore citizens’ perceptual patterns of
the German energy transition, we drew on the method of categorical principal
component analysis. On the basis of our results, we hypothesize that
risk-benefit/acceptance and trust/fairness are two main latent dimensions
underlying citizens’ perception of the energy transition.</jats:p>