Exploring the role of cultural individualism and collectivism on public acceptance of nuclear energy

Public acceptance (PA) is nowadays essential for the sustainable development of nuclear energy and becomes an important issue for research community. Although some studies had investigated the factors influencing PA of nuclear energy, few researches were founded to verify the impact of cultural values. This research proposed a theoretical model to explore how individualism and collectivism, as an important dimension of culture, moderated the relevance between perceived risk/benefit and PA. A questionnaire survey was conducted nationwide in China whose number of under-construction nuclear power plants ranks first in the world, and received 887 valid responses. The analysis of moderating effect showed individualism weakened the relevance between perceived benefit and PA, whereas collectivism had no significant moderating role on the relevance between perceived benefit and PA. Collectivism strengthened the relevance between perceived risk and PA, whereas individualism had no significant moderating role on the relevance between perceived risk and PA. Moreover, perceived benefit was confirmed to be a more important predictor for PA than perceived risk. The above-mentioned findings could not only provide new insights that help to understand the difference in energy policies between China and the developed countries, but also provide new reference and guidance for the future policymaking.