Understanding public support for carbon capture and storage policy: The roles of social capital, stakeholder perceptions, and perceived risk/benefit of technology

As climate change mitigation technologies emerge, there is an increased need to understand public support for the technology and the policies that will shape or thwart its evolution. Of particular importance are the communities most directly impacted. The current study focuses on a random sample of 970 adults in eight counties within the oil and gas industry-reliant region of southeast Texas in order to explore support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is a climate change mitigation technology that has seen a great deal of investment in that area. Results of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis and general linear modeling (GLM) suggest that policy support -individual support and perceived community support - is dependent on perceived risks and benefits of CCS, community-focused perceptions (including Bourdieu's social capital), and perceptions about stakeholders (trustworthiness and expected role in CCS policy making). One key takeaway is that social capital was both a predictor and moderator in community-level CCS support and helped explain the hidden effects of risk perception of CCS and CCS knowledge on community-level CCS support. Implications for public policy and stakeholder relations are discussed.