Rural public acceptance of renewable energy deployment: The case of Shandong in China Wenling Liu a,b , Can Wang a,⇑ , Arthur P.J. Mol b a State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China b Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands highlights " This paper examines rural social acceptance of renewable energy deployment in China. " It was found rural residents are generally supportive renewable development. " Especially, stated willingness to pay more for renewable electricity is tested. " It increases with people’s education, knowledge and belief about cost of renewables. article info Article history: Received 23 February 2012 Received in revised form 2 June 2012 Accepted 17 June 2012 Available online 23 July 2012 Keywords: Local acceptance Renewable energy Willingness to pay Rural China abstract China has set ambitious goals to increase the use of renewable energy. Developing renewables in rural areas is also one of the most important energy strategies. This paper examines rural social acceptance of renewable energy deployment taking Shandong as a case study via a field questionnaire survey. Theory of planned behavior is adopted to establish an analytical framework, and a logit model is used to examine possible determinants of local social acceptance. The results show that rural residents are generally sup- portive renewable energy development given its positive impacts on environment. A stated willingness to pay more for renewable electricity is taken as a variable representing an individual’s behavioral inten- tion. The probability of occurrence of positive intention is found to increase with household income, indi- vidual knowledge level and belief about costs of renewable energy use but decrease with individual age. Residents with higher level of income are more likely to be willing to pay more for green electricity, so are the younger people. Enhancive knowledge and understanding about renewable energy (for instance, the cost) would be conducive to win public acceptance of renewable energy deployment. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Development of renewable energy resources is being promoted as a promising method of solving rural energy issues and improving life condition of rural dwellers. As planned in the mid and long term development plan of renewable energies in China, up to 70% of rural households should have adopted renewable energy in their daily lives by 2020 1 . Although governments and research institutes world- wide express a generally positive attitude towards renewable energy, these years have witnessed that some renewable energy projects faced resistance from the local population [1,2]. Some studies also demonstrated the contradiction between an ambitious high-level target and weak local acceptance [3]. It is especially common in China that a target is set via top-down approaches, but in terms of public preferences less are concerned with. Rural dwellers are major consumers of energy for rural residen- tial use. However, their preferences are easily overlooked given their little involvement in decision-making of public projects. Actually rural households could be easily involved in the produc- tion of (renewable) energy. The production of renewable energy by Chinese rural households plays a key role in the formation or transformation of rural domestic energy uses. So far rural renew- able energy utilization is mainly in the field of residential use [4], and is mainly in the forms of biogas and solar energy utilization operated by households themselves. Learning the attitudes of rural residents towards renewable energy, we are better able to under- stand how to expand renewable energy in rural areas as a way of reducing carbon emission and improving rural living conditions. Previous literatures pay a lot of attentions on public acceptance of renewable energy, however, mainly developed countries are 0306-2619/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2012.06.057 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 62794115; fax: +86 10 62794115/8008. E-mail address: canwang@tsinghua.edu.cn (C. Wang). 1 NDRC. The Mid and Long Term Development Plan of Renewable Energy in China. 2007. Available at: http://www.ccchina.gov.cn/WebSite/CCChina/UpFile/2007/ 20079583745145.pdf. Applied Energy 102 (2013) 1187–1196 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Applied Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy