INTERVIEW British public still undecided on fracking Dr Nick Nash, School of Psychology, Cardiff University In this week’s interview we talk to Dr Nick Nash, from the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, about the public perception of shale gas within the UK and how the industry might best approach the task of convincing the public that shale gas is safe and beneficial. Monica Thomas (Shale Gas International): I would like to talk about the research paper on “UK Public Perceptions of Shale Gas”. Can you tell us how this came about? Dr Nick Nash (Cardiff University): We were led to do this research partly through the impact of The Royal Society’s finding concerning the need to understand UK public perceptions of shale gas extraction and other technologies which are still quite poorly understood, as it turns out, by a lot of UK public. We also need to look at these issues because it’s a backdrop to what’s been referred to as “the energy trilemma”: the need to guarantee a secure supply of energy, the need to ensure the affordability of energy, and the need to meet increasing environmental targets – all of which are putting pressure on the energy industry and creating a need for change both within the industries and also by the people who use these energies in their own homes. We essentially wanted to find out what people perceived to be the risks of shale gas and other energy sources and how they were held differently by different sections of the public. Then we also wanted to look at how messages about shale gas might influence people’s perceptions.
MT: So, when it comes to shale, how high is the level of awareness? How much do people know and understand about the process of extraction, and what shale exploration involves?
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NN: It depends on the wording, I guess. The term ‘fracking’ is a term people are far more familiar with and it is pretty much the nom de plume for the technology. You find very few people using terms such as ‘shale gas’, ‘hydraulic fracturing’. ‘Fracking’ trips of the tongue a bit more, but whenever it’s been portrayed in the media it’s been worded in that way, so people pick it up and use what they hear. But in terms of how many people have heard of shale in a non-semantic sense, looking broadly at shale attitudes from what we’ve got from public perception literature, you find that because it is often in the media, and it’s an unconventional energy source, that more people have heard of it compared with other unconventional sources such as carbon capture and storage, and coal gasification, etc. Although people have heard of it, it’s been mostly in relation to opposition from environmental groups and media coverage. So while most people are aware – I think that in the DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) study they found that around 74 percent of the British public have heard of it there was considerable ambivalence. About half of the respondents neither opposed nor supported shale gas, a quarter were more supportive and the remaining quarter were opposed. So high awareness and high ambivalence.
MT: That is something that I found very interesting in your research, but this is not what the environmentalists would like us to believe. They would have us believe that the British public is unequivocally against shale. Would you say that these finding indicate that the battle over public perceptions on shale hasn’t been lost yet, contrary to what the environmentalists say, since half of the British public is still undecided? NN: I think as far as the industry goes, and as far our recent research has found, there is considerable ambivalence in people’s perceptions of shale gas. And it does present an opportunity for the industry to try and engage with public groups. And I say ‘public groups’ rather than ‘the public’ because something else that the research has highlighted is that depending on the background of the audience, it can dictate to a fairly significant degree how receptive they are to particular arguments. As you have said, this is a rhetorical battle ground. The shale industry is a relatively new one. People are more comfortable with more conventional fossil fuels – they are the ones people know, the ones they grew up with, and there is a kind of biographical understanding along the lines of “we had coal in our house” or “we have central heating”. Those kind of biographical details feed into people’s perceptions. So what you find is that there was quite a lot of media coverage of shale gas which has at times
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portrayed it in a fairly negative way and – as you would expect – you had environmental groups, who also put a particular perspective on the issue surrounding shale gas in a way that gets people to oppose it. Going back to our research, the fact that we have found some evidence of ambivalence amongst the British public, gives the industry ample opportunity to engage. Because what you find in psychology is that once people’s attitudes and perceptions have formed, they are very difficult to change. It is always better to engage early and try to put arguments for shale gas now, rather than leaving it until a later date. Because the environmental lobby is quite strong, once one side gets into people’s heads it is quite difficult to counteract that.
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Half of the respondents neither opposed nor supported shale gas, a quarter were more supportive and the remaining quarter were opposed.
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MT: What are the main concerns that people have when it comes to shale extraction? Would that be water contamination or earth tremors or something like the impact on the house prices? NN: In the UK, at least, what you find is that the concerns are predominately to do with water contamination, whereas the issue of induced seismicity – that’s been found to be declining in the public perceptions of risks associated with shale gas. Going back to what I said about the ambivalence, you have those factors on the once side, but you also have more people seeing shale gas as a cheap form of energy. And some recent research has suggested that that’s maybe where the ambivalence comes from, the associated risks on the one hand and the economic benefit on the other.
MT: Some of the areas where shale gas is likely to be explored would benefit from regeneration and job-creation. So on the one hand you have people concerned about the value of their properties going down, but on the other there are economic benefits. So my question is: are attitudes to shale influenced by geography? Is there a North-South divide when it comes to attitudes toward shale? NN: When it comes to shale, it seems that the overriding factors that influence people’s perceptions are to do with demographic differences, their political affiliations and also their environmental values. So basically that means that the contextual details are very important. More important, we’ve found, than where people live. The people who are the most likely to support shale tend to be those who are more positive towards
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those kind of unconventional energy sources. They tend to be male, they also tend to be politically right of centre, and they also tend to be more educated – this is particularly noticeable with scientific education. As I had mentioned earlier, we did look at differences between members of the public living in three different regions; so looking at areas where fracking had taken place, areas where fracking could potentially take place, and areas where fracking wasn’t possible for geological reasons. In the study we’ve found that there were more favourable attitudes expressed in those areas where fracking had already taken place. However, when you control for those demographics, you will find there wasn’t actually any difference that we could discern due to where people lived. It was more down to other contextual factors.
MT: Some of those factors I find quite interesting. Because while I can understand that somebody who has a higher level of technical understanding would, perhaps, put more faith in the industry carrying out fracturing in a responsible manner, things like newspaper readership is quite a surprising differentiating factor. Why are people watching television more likely to oppose fracking than the people reading newspapers? That is quite a surprising finding, don’t you think? NN: One of the things about our research was that it was fairly exploratory and it almost raises as many questions as we were able to answer. The newspaper readership was an interesting finding. There may be some demographic difference between these two groups that absorb news and information through certain media forms, for example comparing watching TV and buying newspapers. We haven’t had the opportunity to look into it in any greater detail. It wouldn’t be right for me to suggest any particular reasons for it as we don’t really have any evidence or any full understanding of why this difference came up.
MT: When I researched this topic, and obviously read your paper, it made me think of a book I read a while ago. It’s a rather well-known book called “How to Win Campaigns” by Chris Rose, who was the Head of Campaigning at Greenpeace. One thing he said, that I found quite controversial, is that education is the opposite of influencing. When you educate people, you show the complexity of a problem and that leads to a paralysis, where people are aware of the complexity of the issue and therefore are not certain how to act. However, by simplifying issues you motivate people on an emotional level and get them to act. Consequently he advised that if you want to change people’s perception, you need to simplify the message which, when it comes to shale, would be “fracking kills”.
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And that’s quite interesting because there is quite a lot of stress put on educating the public when it comes to fracking, and at the same time you’ve got environmental groups, who are not particularly interested in education, but are very consistent in their message of “fracking is evil”. So I would like to know your opinion on that. NN: Well, I am kind of aware of that argument and I think that looking at a more emotional appeal or a more rational appeal, both tend to maybe simplify the understanding of how to persuade to a fairly significant degree. So whilst they both have their virtues, they are both missing things. What researchers suggested, was that there were, maybe, three different types of factors involved in how people understand risk and their perception of it.
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So for example you’ve got technology In the UK what you find is that characteristics – how people imagine the the concerns are predominately scale of the technology, waste outputs, etc. to do with water contamination. So you have those very real-world issues. Second, you’ve got all the psychological processes that are also going on. For example; how attached people are to a place, maybe they are feeling threatened by new technology, which is often an argument voiced against. And also their familiarity with the technology.
Thirdly, you’ve got wider social and institutional factors. For example: trust in the sources of the information, issues to do with ownership and governance – those kind of things. So it’s a combination of factors. They are broadly reflective of social, psychological, emotive communication and persuasion, and they also highlight similar factors to do with the audience, and the individual’s level of engagement, their prior knowledge, their other values that they adhere to. All this will affect the way they receive the message. That could be an emotional appeal, but it also can be some factual information. Lastly you have the message factors – the things to do with the message itself. How is the message phrased? Where is it coming from? Going back to what had been mentioned at the very start; “shale gas” and “hydraulic fracturing” versus “fracking”. They are the two terms for the same process, effectively, but they tend to create rather different ideas about the technology. And also, again, you have the source and contextual factors, to do with trust in who is providing the message. It could also be to do with other factors such as timing, all of these things combine. So we should be looking at public groups, rather than the public as a whole, whether we are trying to appeal to them on an emotional level or on a rational level.
MT: So what you’re saying is that rather than preparing one message and making sure that
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it is delivered, the industry should address different groups in a different manner and in different contexts? NN: Yes. I think that there is a need for being more pluralistic and rather than just provide a message, to think about how the message is going to be perceived, and how it might be received by the audience, and what are the discussions that are going on around it. It’s a whole raft of different issues. It’s not just to deliver the message itself, it’s far, far broader than that. I’ve been involved in quite a lot of different kinds of research to do with communicating issues to the public, or understanding public perceptions – not just shale gas, or energy technology – and you find that you need a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to understanding and addressing public perceptions.
Published: 3rd August, 2015
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