Attitudes of University Students on Nuclear Power Plants: A Proposal of the Structural Equation Model

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence university students' acceptance of nuclear power plants with a proposed Structural Equation Model (SEM). For this purpose, a research model was designed with literature search and various hypotheses were developed to test the model relations. A data collection tool was then developed to test the hypotheses put forward. Factors involved in the research model; related to nuclear power plants are Trust, Environmental Benefit Perception, Energy Utility Perception, Risk Perception and Acceptance. In the proposed model, Trust is defined as exegenous, accepted endegenous, and others are defined as endegenous latent variables. In the study, the proposed research model was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and the goodness fit of the proposed model was evaluated according to various fit measures. As a result of the study, it has been determined that trust and energy utility perception related to nuclear power plants are important factors in the acceptance of power plants.

Keywords

• acceptance
• nuclear power plants
• risk
• structural modeling