This paper makes a conceptual inquiry into the notion of ‘publics’, and forwards an understanding of this notion that allows more responsible forms of decision-making with regards to technologies that have localized impacts, such as wind parks, hydrogen stations or flood barriers. The outcome of this inquiry is that the acceptability of a decision is to be assessed by a plurality of ‘publics’, including that of a local community. Even though a plurality of ‘publics’ might create competing normative demands, its acknowledgment is necessary to withstand the monopolization of the process of technology appraisal. The paper presents four ways in which such an appropriation of publicness takes place. The creation of dedicated ‘local publics’, in contrast, helps to overcome these problems and allows for more responsible forms of decision-making. We describe ‘local publics’ as those in which stakeholders from the different publics that are related to the process of technology implementation are brought together, and in which concerns and issues from these publics are deliberated upon. The paper will present eight conditions for increasing the effectiveness of such ‘local publics’.

Citizens’ emotional responses to energy technology projects influence the success of the technology's implementation. Contrary to popular belief, these emotions can have a systematic base. Bringing together insights from appraisal theory and from technology acceptance studies, this study develops and tests hypotheses regarding antecedents of anger, fear, joy, and pride about a local hydrogen fuel station (HFS). A questionnaire study was conducted among 271 citizens living near the first publicly accessible HFS in the Netherlands, around the time of its implementation. The results show that anger is significantly explained by (from stronger to weaker effects) perceived procedural and distributive unfairness, and fear by distributive unfairness, perceived safety, procedural unfairness, gender, and prior awareness. Joy is significantly explained by perceived environmental outcomes and perceived usefulness, and pride by prior awareness, perceived risks, trust in industry, and perceived usefulness. The study concludes that these predictors are understandable practical and moral considerations, which can and should be taken into account when developing and executing a project.