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Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a rapidly expanding electricity supply model in the United States. By enabling local governments to obtain electricity for their residents, CCAs have the potential to increase the use of renewable energy while lowering costs. Recent studies have focused on how C...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wu, Victor Y., Howarth, Richard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10547185/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37788267
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292136
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author Wu, Victor Y.
Howarth, Richard
author_facet Wu, Victor Y.
Howarth, Richard
author_sort Wu, Victor Y.
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description Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a rapidly expanding electricity supply model in the United States. By enabling local governments to obtain electricity for their residents, CCAs have the potential to increase the use of renewable energy while lowering costs. Recent studies have focused on how CCAs will impact renewable energy markets, since at least five more states are currently considering CCA-enabling legislation. However, little research has been done on partisan attitudes towards CCAs or how to shift public opinion to support the continued expansion of CCAs. We use a nationally representative survey experiment of 1,862 respondents to evaluate outreach and awareness campaigns by nonprofit and government organizations seeking to expand CCAs. We find that most Americans are currently unfamiliar with CCAs, but exposing them to educational outreach information increases their support for CCAs at the state, local, and personal levels. Furthermore, this information is equally effective at increasing support among both Democrats and Republicans, despite partisan polarization on renewable energy. However, this information did not significantly affect respondents’ price sensitivity with regard to CCAs. Our results suggest that outreach and awareness campaigns can be effective at increasing support for CCA among both Democrats and Republicans.
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spelling pubmed-105471852023-10-04 Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness Wu, Victor Y. Howarth, Richard PLoS One Research Article Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a rapidly expanding electricity supply model in the United States. By enabling local governments to obtain electricity for their residents, CCAs have the potential to increase the use of renewable energy while lowering costs. Recent studies have focused on how CCAs will impact renewable energy markets, since at least five more states are currently considering CCA-enabling legislation. However, little research has been done on partisan attitudes towards CCAs or how to shift public opinion to support the continued expansion of CCAs. We use a nationally representative survey experiment of 1,862 respondents to evaluate outreach and awareness campaigns by nonprofit and government organizations seeking to expand CCAs. We find that most Americans are currently unfamiliar with CCAs, but exposing them to educational outreach information increases their support for CCAs at the state, local, and personal levels. Furthermore, this information is equally effective at increasing support among both Democrats and Republicans, despite partisan polarization on renewable energy. However, this information did not significantly affect respondents’ price sensitivity with regard to CCAs. Our results suggest that outreach and awareness campaigns can be effective at increasing support for CCA among both Democrats and Republicans. Public Library of Science 2023-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10547185/ /pubmed/37788267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292136 Text en © 2023 Wu, Howarth https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Wu, Victor Y.
Howarth, Richard
Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title_full Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title_fullStr Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title_full_unstemmed Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title_short Shifting partisan public opinion towards Community Choice Aggregation through outreach and awareness
title_sort shifting partisan public opinion towards community choice aggregation through outreach and awareness
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10547185/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37788267
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292136
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