Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijggc General public reactions to carbon capture and storage: Does culture matter? Farid Karimi a,b, ⁎ , Arho Toikka c a Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Finland b New Energy Technologies, Aalto University, PO Box 15100, 00076 Espoo, Finland c Environmental Policy Research Group, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 37, 00014 Helsinki, Finland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Carbon capture and storage National culture Social acceptability Risk perception Climate change Energy policy Social acceptance ABSTRACT We scrutinise the controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology from a cross-cultural perspective. The reaction of the public to CCS will considerably affect the development of the technology. Previous research has identified general and local mechanisms in how the general public reacts to CCS. Researchers have noticed that differences exist between countries, but the effects of cross-cultural differences have not been explored in detail. We argue that it is crucial to understand how public perceptions of the technology emerge and form in their individual contexts or embedded in large-scale cultural frameworks. Public reaction to CCS is structured in two dimensions—risk perception and benefit perception—and we design a model with individual and national cultural level predictors. We indicate that effects of individual level variables such as familiarity with technology, or sociodemographic variables such as education, are important but their effects are likely mediated and confounded by the cultural setting people operate in. The results show that, in parallel with other factors such as trust, risk perception is affected by cultural dimensions such as uncertainty avoidance and the society’s short-term or long-term orientation. We provide a framework to understand why and how societies challenge the technology. 1. Introduction The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes carbon capture and storage (CCS) as one of the key technologies for climate change mitigation, and their scenarios show that CCS may contribute 15–55% of cumulative global mitigation until 2100 (Metz et al., 2005). The principal aims of CCS technology are to avoid un- desired greenhouse gas emissions while using fossil fuels for energy generation, and mitigation of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from large-scale emitting industries such as cement and steel. However, the implementation of CCS has lagged behind the scenarios. CCS tech- nology consists of three steps: capture, transport, and storage. Cost of capture is generally regarded as a major constraint, making it ques- tionable that a global rollout of CCS will actually consist of more than demonstration plants and a few attempts at commercial plants. The second step in CCS is transport. Technically, transportation of CO 2 is feasible based on the existing technologies (Hendriks et al., 2007). The last part of the technology concerns storage. The storage phase is one of the most controversial parts of CCS because of the large uncertainty involved, for example, the possibility of CO 2 leakage (Metz et al., 2005). The number and location of safe reservoirs are the major con- cerns. Storage possibilities are restricted, even though from a technical perspective there appears to be enough capacity to store global CO 2 emissions for many decades. Much uncertainty exists about the suit- ability of the various storage options, as well as much societal opposi- tion once a particular storage site has been selected (Huijts et al., 2007). Opponents are concerned about the risk of a large or small amount of gas leakage, warning against the hazard of seismic activity due to un- derground pressure change as a result of geological storage. The development and deployment of CCS technology rely on public perception and acceptance of the technology in line with the technical aspects of the technology (Oltra et al., 2012; Seigo et al., 2014a; Seigo et al., 2014b; Dowd et al., 2014; Schumann, 2015). Oltra et al. (2010) assert that risk perception of CCS is the concern of policymakers and industries. According to Seigo et al. (2014a) the study of the public perception of the technology enables stakeholders to prevent conflicts and disputes. Several factors exist which affect the risk perception and under- standing of the technology. In this study, we discuss an important but under-researched factor: cross-cultural characteristics. A few studies have shown the importance of cultural values and traits in risk per- ception and understanding of a technology (Kahan, 2009; Slovic, 2000; Weber and Hsee, 1998; Bontempo et al., 1997; Thompson and Wildavsky, 1982) but they did not bring about macroculture or what https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijggc.2018.01.012 Received 8 March 2017; Received in revised form 25 September 2017; Accepted 14 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Environmental Policy Research Group, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 37, 00014 Helsinki, Finland. E-mail addresses: farid.karimi@helsinki.fi (F. Karimi), arho.toikka@helsinki.fi (A. Toikka). International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control 70 (2018) 193–201 1750-5836/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T