Document Type

Working Paper

Date of Original Version

4-2026

Abstract

Social acceptance of solar energy is critical to understand as society broadly wants to transition to renewable energy, but specific projects face significant hurdles. We study a municipal referendum that decided the fate of a particular utility-scale solar project and take advantage of this consequential setting to better understand how individual beliefs and socioeconomic factors affect support. On Election Day, we conducted an exit poll survey and collected responses from 504 voters. Regression results indicate that trust in government, belief in anthropogenic climate change, and positive attitudes about solar energy in general are all strongly and positively related to approval. In terms of socioeconomic factors, we find that approval is positively related to age but negatively related to the amount of time a voter has lived in the town. The coefficients on these variables are of similar magnitude, suggesting somewhat offsetting impacts of place attachment and age. However, it also indicates that older voters who recently moved are most likely to approve and younger voters who grew up there are least likely to approve, all else equal. The referendum as a whole offers a case study in how opinions can be democratized in a contentious arena in which people often feel unheard.

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