Adopting an interdisciplinary social science approach, this book examines community reactions to wind farms to form a new understanding of what facilitates social acceptance.

Based on empirical research, this book investigates opposition to wind energy and considers the advantages and the limits of co-operative schemes for wind farm community ownership. Giuseppe Pellegrini-Masini compares the role of co-operative schemes with community benefits schemes in increasing acceptability, and also sheds light on the impact of social factors including pro-environmental attitudes, perceived benefits and costs, place attachment, trust, as well as individual resources such as information and income. Five research cases are investigated in England and Scotland, including the first locally community-owned wind farm co-operative in the UK. Critically reviewing existing social research theories, this book offers a new viewpoint, integrating rational choice and environmental attitudinal theories, from which to assess and understand social acceptability of wind energy, and highlights new opportunities for raising consensus in communities towards locally proposed wind farms.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of renewable energy, energy policy, environmental sociology, environmental psychology, environmental planning and sustainability in general, as well as policymakers.