Perceptions and attitudes of residents living near a wind turbine compared with those living near a coal power plant

This study addresses resident attitudes and visual and auditory impacts from nearby electricity generation. Unlike most prior studies, questions allowing bidirectional answers are used, allowing positive or negative responses, and matched questions are applied in paired communities, one community proximate to utility-scale wind generation and the second proximate to fossil generation. At least a few individuals had negative attitudes and reported negative visual and auditory impact regardless of which type of generation-but residents near the wind turbine predominately had positive attitudes toward the facility, and reported more positive than negative visual and auditory impacts. Conversely, residents near coal generation reported substantially more negative attitudes, visual impacts, and auditory impacts from the coal plant. When asked about willingness-to-pay to keep or remove the nearby facility, residents near the wind turbine would, on average, say they would pay $2.56 a month to keep it in place, whereas residents near the coal plant were, on average, willing to pay $1.82 a month to remove that facility. Demographics did not have significant effect on the results.