Public acceptance of a large-scale offshore wind power project in South Korea

The South Korean government is planning to expand the share of renewable energy generation to 20% by 2030 from 2.2% in 2016. As a part of the plan, a project is underway to install a large-scale offshore wind farm with a total capacity of 2.46 GW in the Southwest sea of South Korea. This article reports on the public acceptance of the project using data from a nationwide survey of 1000 individuals asking their opinion about the project through a Likert five-point scale. To this end, an ordered probit model is applied to analyze the determinants of pros and cons of the project. Of the respondents, 43.3% agreed to the project and 23.8% disagreed to that. Overall, South Koreans are supportive of the project. The results show that people who live in the Seoul Metropolitan area, those who are richer than others, those who has installed solar power facility for family use, those who consider the level of proper ratio of natural gas generation to be high, and/or those who are politically progressive are more supportive of the project than others. On the other hand, the respondents using more electricity tend to oppose the project than others. These findings could be used as an important reference in the governmental promotion for the project.