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Short abstract:

This paper examines trust as a vital link between acceptance and acceptability in the energy transition. Amidst resistance in socio-technical developments, trust emerges as key factor. Through interdisciplinary literature, the dynamics of acceptance, acceptability, and trust are conceptualized.

Long abstract:

Using the example of the energy transition as socio-technical transformation, this contribution explores the role of trust as conceptual bridge between acceptance and acceptability. The energy transition is broadly conceived as contested and complex endeavour – all the more as society depends on the system whilst the implied changes are to be taking place (Büscher et al., 2020). These circumstances bring about an array of proposed solutions and negotiated societal interventions – and questions of acceptance and acceptability. Crucial example for this is the missing acceptance of and, to some extent, explicit resistance against energy grid development projects. Current debates discuss these pushbacks as not just challenging the respective envisioned socio-technical configurations, but also conceptualizations of acceptance and acceptability.

Facing this, scholars of Technology Assessment, STS and related disciplines turn their attention towards conceptualizing trust – arguing the changes of the energy grid as deeply charged with questions of trust and mistrust for all involved stakeholders (Greenberg, 2014; Sumpf, 2019). As informal element external to regulated frameworks, trust can “close a gap between acceptance and acceptability” (Weydner-Volkmann, 2021, p. 53) – or even act as “a conditio sine qua non for the acceptability” of a process aimed at gaining acceptability for a specific socio-technical intervention (Ceglarz et al., 2017, p. 577).

This contribution synthesises these conceptual developments on the basis of an interdisciplinary literature review and discuss them from the perspective of Technology Assessment and STS. Doing so, I aim to extend the conceptual relationship between acceptance, acceptability and trust.