Acceptance Politics

Research Framework

Public acceptance of S&T has become a persistent concern in the aftermath of the controversies over, and resistance to, nuclear power and its risks in many countries since the mid-1960s—particularly among those actors who are engaged in funding, generating, and applying major innovations. In order to better understand why a certain field or application of S&T has been perceived unfavorably, a multidisciplinary research area was established, comprising an extensive infrastructure of institutes and journals.

Along with its growth and differentiation, this research has undergone several stages and taken on various shapes—which, all in all, can be characterized by its focus on the cognitive, emotive, and communicative relationships of the public toward S&T (or, respectively, toward those actors concerned with their development). Key concepts have thus been risk perception, risk amplification, attitudes toward risk (e.g., risk taking versus-risk avoidance), and risk communication. Besides risk, other dimensions have increasingly been investigated as factors shaping public perceptions and attitudes, in particular the usefulness of S&T applications and their moral or cultural implications.

In addition to its research focus, the PUST tradition can also be characterized by its—implicit if not explicit—mission to advise public or private actors concerned with funding, generating or applying innovations on how to overcome lacking acceptance. Such remedies have been pursued through systematic efforts to provide better information or to communicate more effectively to the public, or even, more recently, to engage with the public in more open and novel ways. Thus, depending on the extent to which the research on acceptance embodies concerns to actually improve acceptance, it becomes part of acceptance politics.

...