Attitudes towards offshore wind farms
The role of beach visits on attitude and demographic and attitude relations

Presently, few papers have analysed attitudes towards offshore wind farms in a population living in an area with offshore wind farms. The present studies aim at covering some of that seemingly uncharted territory by analysing attitudes towards existing offshore wind farms in Denmark. Applying an ordered probit model, the results show that the respondents hold generally positive attitudes towards offshore wind farms. The results also indicate that attitude formation seems to be a function of the gender, income, level of education, type of visit to the beach, visit frequency and the view to on-land turbines from the residence. Perhaps more interestingly, the observed relations between demographics and attitude are found to be dependent on the type and frequency of usage of the beach among the respondents. This suggests that attitude formation towards offshore wind farms seems to be dependent on the type and frequency of use of the beach. To the author’s knowledge these findings are novel as such relations have not yet been identified in the literature. As such, the results shed light on a new angle in both the literature focusing on the opposition formation towards wind power projects in general and offshore wind farms in particular.