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Understanding user perceptions is particularly important in developing social robots, which tend to have a high degree of interaction with humans. However, psychometric measures of robot acceptability have only recently started to become available. The present critical review outlines the psychometrically validated questionnaires to measure social acceptability factors related to social robots. Using an iterative search strategy, articles were identified that reported on the development of such questionnaires as well as information about their psychometric properties. Six questionnaires were identified that provide researchers with options varying in length, content, and factor structure. Two of these questionnaires inquire about attitudes and anxieties related to robots, while two others capture a larger range of attitudes that extends to positive and neutral aspects as well. One of the questionnaires reviewed here was specific to inquiring about ethical issues related to the use of social robots for therapy with children with autism, and the last one was designed to provide an assessment of expectations of participants prior to interacting with a robot. Overall, the use of robot acceptability measures is still relatively new, and further psychometric work is necessary to provide confidence in the validity and reliability of these scales.

PurposeThe purpose of this article is (1) to carry out an ambivalent analysis of the determinants (benefits/risks) of the adoption of cultured meat, (2) to identify their impacts on consumers’ attitudes (cognitive, affective and conative) and (3) to propose a research agenda.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of the relevant literature was conducted. The authors selected 86 articles that were coded using NVivo 12 software according to the theoretical framework chosen for this study: (1) consumer attitude ambivalence (benefit–risk) – conflicting presence of positive and negative attitudes in decision-making, (2) the consumer preference theory – choice of consumers based on utility maximisation or best characteristics/determinants and (3) the three-dimensional perspective of attitude – cognitive, affective and behavioural components. The authors followed the methodological steps (formulation of the research question, identification of relevant scientific studies, evaluation of the quality of studies, summary of evidence and interpretation of results) recommended by Lipsey and Wilson (2001) and Tranfield et al. (2003). Several keywords were drawn from a study by Bryant and Barnett (2019) on cultured meat (CM) nomenclature and its impact on consumer acceptance.FindingsThe identified articles were relatively recent (84/86 articles were published after 2010) and in the fields of agriculture and ethical agriculture (22/86), policy and regulations (12/86) and psychology (11/86). Content analysis helped identify four types of ambivalent determinants for the adoption of cultured meat: ethics, intrinsic, informational and belief. The results suggest the existence of a group of “dominant” determinants for each attitude component. Thus, the dominant determinants of cognitive, affective and conative components are informational, ethical and intrinsic determinants, respectively.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is based on a systematic review of literature and is a review of the narrative literature that provides an overview of what is known about cultured meat adoption. The main weakness of this type of method is the feasibility generally associated with the existence (and a sufficient number) of studies that can be included. Other types of the meta-analytic method could have been used and could have explored different measures and biases (e.g. effect sizes, statistical power, sampling error, measurement error and publication bias). Also, as a food technology whose social acceptability would be influenced by all stakeholders, it would be relevant to expand the analysis to other types of stakeholders.Practical implicationsLittle is still known to the public about the adoption mechanisms of this technology. In terms of behaviour, Siegrist et al. (2018) suggest that new studies should focus on factors that influence the individual differences in the willingness of consumers to eat or purchase cultured meat. By identifying the dominant target influence of informational determinants on cognitive components, that of ethical determinants on affective components and finally that of intrinsic determinants on conative attitudes, this article offers a first avenue of solution to businesses operating in this new industry, as well as to public authorities, to improve the acceptance of cultured meat. Private businesses will benefit from the results of this research by understanding the underlying motivations of consumers to adopt this type of innovation in order to adjust future marketing.Social implicationsThis article, through better understanding of the psychological mechanisms that contribute to its social acceptability amongst the population, has the potential to improve educational campaigns for this technology. The results could thus guide both public policies as well as the regulation of activities related to cultured meat in the coming years, professional orders, private businesses and the general public. It thus provides initial insight needed to understand this public debate.Originality/valueResearch addressing cultured meat has come primarily from agribusiness and environmental and biological sciences. The authors highlighted the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between biological and social sciences to address ethical issues. This article, via multidisciplinary systematic reviews, links environmental/biological sciences and social sciences, and management.

There is increasing recognition that sustainable diets need to be ‘culturally appropriate’. In relation to food consumption, however, it is often unclear what cultural appropriateness–or related terms, such as cultural or social acceptability–actually means. Often these terms go undefined, and where definitions are present, they vary widely. Based on a systematic literature review this paper explores how cultural appropriateness of food consumption is conceptualised across different research literatures, identifying six main themes in how cultural appropriateness is understood and applied. The paper then critically analyses these themes in relation to sustainable food system transformation. We explore how the themes conceptualise change, finding that cultural appropriateness is viewed in two main ways: either as a relatively static obstacle to be overcome, or as a dynamic and negotiated process. Both perspectives, we argue, entail different scientific, practical and political effects. Each perspective offers particular affordances for understanding and governing sustainable food system transition, although between perspectives there is likely to be a trade-off between theoretical sophistication and practical operationalizability. Based on this analysis we argue that researchers, policymakers and practitioners should be explicit about their commitment to a particular understanding of cultural appropriateness, as this will have implications for scientific and societal applications of their work. This is particularly the case, we suggest, in relation to the transdisciplinary collaborations necessary to effectively address the ‘wicked problem’ of food system sustainability. We conclude by offering a tentative general definition of cultural appropriateness as it relates to food consumption.

The global increase in renewable energy initiatives has been followed by the need to include the social impact of any project as a core element. Significant challenges for renewable energy development include uncertainty in assessing social impacts at local scales, participation and social acceptance. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches have been widely used in energy planning to address these challenges. This article reviews how social criteria and participation mechanisms have been incorporated into decision-making processes for renewable energy projects. A total of 184 articles were analyzed. A total of 490 indicators that estimated social impacts were identified and organized into nine criteria: employment, social acceptance, social development, health impact, governance, visual impact, knowledge and awareness, cultural value and social justice. Most research included analytical hierarchy process methodologies, and the articles were geographically concentrated in Asia and Europe. Most articles included a participative component (92.3%), and the majority of them were based on expert consultation (75.4%). Of the articles that exclusively considered experts, almost 40% did not provide any description of the expert elicitation process. Results revealed advances in the use of MCDA but highlighted important challenges—related to improving expert consultation methodologies and broadening the participation of stakeholders—when developing renewable energy initiatives and policies.

The social acceptability of wind farms has been researched for several decades now, with the first research tracing back to the 1980s. This paper aims to deliver a literature review within the structural framework proposed by the paper of variables influencing the acceptability of wind farms. The large amount of research published on the social acceptability of wind farms requires an effort to identify and categorise variables to deliver a holistic understanding of opposition and support to wind energy. We classify the variables into three main categories: first, ‘psychological variables’, including perceived benefits and costs, emotions, and attitudes; second, ‘contextual variables’, including community energy schemes and media influence; and finally, third, ‘personal resources’, including income or wealth, place of residence, and relevant knowledge in relation to the wind farm. In agreement with other scholars, we argue that NIMBYism (not in my backyard) is an outdated and simplistic explanation for opposition to wind farms. Instead, we provide a theoretical framework to explain the acceptability of wind energy and show how these variables might influence both acceptance and opposition.

Although a clear definition of energy poverty has not been reported in the scientific literature or in general energy directives, this condition affects about 10% of European people. During the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the increase in energy bill costs due to energy conflicts has determined the increment of energy poverty. The Renewable Energy Directive, that defines a new legal entity named Renewable Energy Community as a new end-users’ organization, recognizes the chance for low-income households to benefit from being able to access affordable energy tariffs and energy efficiency measures thanks to these new entities. Thus, this paper analyses the energy, economic, and environmental performances of a renewable energy community composed of three residential users distributed in two buildings located in the south of Italy, and one of these buildings is equipped by a rooftop photovoltaic plant. The plants were modelled and simulated through HOMERPRO simulation software while the building energy loads are real and were imported from an energy distributor dataset and were processed in the MATLAB simulation interface. The analysis concerned the comparison of the energy performance achieved by one case in which no renewable plants were installed, and by another case in which the end-users took part in the renewable energy community by sharing the photovoltaic “produced” electricity. The investigation was conducted in terms of the quantity of electricity imported from the power grid and consumed on-site, the avoided emissions, and the operating costs. The business plan has been devoted to defining the advantages of the energy community for vulnerable end-users in a popular neighborhood council estate by evaluating the social energy poverty indexes. The results showed that through the renewable energy community, a mitigation of energy poverty is obtained within a range of 12–16%.

Renewable energy (RE) projects are vital to achieving sustainable development in the context of the pressing challenges of climate change and the energy transition. However, despite the global consensus on their importance, RE projects often encounter significant resistance at the local level. This article investigates how territorial characteristics influence the social acceptability of RE projects and explores the concept of fertile ground as a framework for understanding the conditions that foster or hinder local support for such projects. Drawing on theories of regional path dependency and leadership agency, we identify the historical, socioeconomic, cultural and governance factors shaping local attitudes towards RE projects. By employing qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders and the analysis of press articles, we develop a nuanced approach that incorporates key territorial dynamics. Our findings reveal the critical role of historical industrial conflicts, political leadership, place attachment and perceptions of fairness in shaping local acceptability. They also highlight the influence of habituation and saturation effects, which shows that the acceptability of RE projects is not static; rather, it evolves over time in response to local conditions and stakeholder engagement. By situating the fertile ground concept within broader frameworks of social acceptability, this study provides actionable insights to policymakers and project developers seeking to align RE initiatives with local contexts and values.

Effective flood risk management (FRM) requires a mix of policy instruments that reduces, shares, and manages flood risk. The social acceptability of these policy instruments—the degree of public support or opposition to their use—is an important consideration when designing an optimal mix to achieve FRM objectives. This paper examines public attitudes toward FRM policy instruments based on a national survey of Canadians living in high-risk areas. Respondents were asked their views on flood maps, disaster assistance, flood insurance, flood risk disclosure and liability, and property buyouts. The results indicate that all five policy instruments have high social acceptability, but they must be calibrated to ensure access to flood risk information and achieve a fair distribution of FRM costs among key stakeholders.

Air pollution is one of the primary concerns of our society for its effect on human health and the environment. Among the policy measures that can be put in place to limit air pollutant emissions, end-of-pipe technologies and/or regulatory instruments may be implemented through legislative acts. Also, equally important are behavioural measures, requiring citizens’ active involvement. The success of any measure to limit pollutant emissions requires the acceptance by the citizens that, in turn, implies a correct perception of the main pollutant emission drivers. We present here the comparison between the public perception of air pollution sources and the real-world situation through a survey carried out in seven European countries and involving 16 101 respondents. Our study shows a dramatic underestimation of the contribution of the agri-food sector to air pollution. This result is common to all respondents in the seven countries examined and only to a small extent depends on gender, age and socio-economic status of the respondents.

Incidents of online public shaming can have devastating consequences for those who are shamed, but how those who witness shaming behaviors react is unclear. When considering online public shaming, it is crucial to be aware of the context in which it occurs. Implicit norms that govern these contexts and evoke emotions can influence what is deemed as acceptable behavior when witnessing public shaming. However, previous work has not examined the role that perceived social acceptability of the shaming content and emotional arousal may have in explaining social media behavior after witnessing online shaming incidents. We posed three research questions to explore and characterize people's reactions to witnessing online public shaming: (1) Does perceived social acceptability predict subsequent engagement with tweets; (2) Are participants' emotional reactions to tweets associated with self-assessed likelihood to engage in certain behaviors; and (3) What do participants' explanations of their reactions to tweets illustrate about their views about appropriate online behavior? We conducted a between-subjects experimental design in which participants saw 1 of 4 tweets: shaming of a couple holding a wedding that became a super-spreader event (shaming condition) and 3 control tweets: 1 expressing positive sentiment about a wedding during the COVID-19 pandemic(wedding condition), a public service announcement providing information about obtaining COVID-19-related information (COVID-19 condition); and a tweet expressing neutral sentiment (control condition). To answer the first 2 questions, we constructed regression models with replying or commenting, sharing, and liking as the dependent variables and factors including demographic characteristics, social media behaviors, tweet type, perception of social acceptability, and emotions as the independent variables. To characterize how participants interpreted the online act, we performed an inductive qualitative analysis of open-ended responses explaining participants' reactions to the tweet they saw, and then compared the prominence of the themes across the conditions using ANOVAs. We invited 800 participants, and 742 participants completed the entire study. Regarding the first research question, the perception of a tweet as socially acceptable increased all forms of social engagement, with increased liking, sharing, and commenting. Regarding emotions, positive emotions were associated with a greater tendency to engage in all 3 behaviors, whereas fear, shame, and anger involved more interactions between the tweet type, emotion, and the subsequent behavior (liking, sharing, or commenting). Last, qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses yielded a model of media interpretation and engagement in online environments comprising 5 factors: environment, sense-making and assessment, message, tone, and other, with substantial differences in the themes across the tweet types. This study augments our understanding of people's responses to online public shaming, including the diverse factors that may affect interpretations and subsequent action. Considering these factors in platform design can mitigate negative consequences.