A mathematical model of the activities for public acceptance and the resultant reaction of the public: An application to the nuclear problem

A model was developed to qualitatively assess the effect of the activities for nuclear public acceptance (PA). In this model, the news media and PA activities were assumed to have essentially the same characteristics as each other in changing public attitude toward nuclear energy. With the introduction of advertisement theory, the changed part of attitude was supposed to be formed of two components; the one is the emotional component which changes directly following the stimuli by the media and PA activities, and the other is the rational component which is formed hierarchically by passing through the stage from a stimulus to understanding. The Japanese case was treated as a case study, where the public was categorised into five demographic classes with each gender, and the time-varying attitude to nuclear energy and the effect of PA activities were quantified with each demographic class. The time behavior of calculated attitude was found to well reproduce the observed one, indicating the values for the effect of PA activities derived by this model to be reliable. Future behavior of public attitude expected when continuous PA activities are made hereafter, and the effect of nuclear education to the minority, were also investigated. This methodology is applicable to estimate the effect of PA activities not only for nuclear energy, but also for any type of subject.