Distance to Offshore Wind Farms and Onshore Wind Power Spillover Relations and the Willingness to Pay for Farshore Large-Scale Wind Power Development

As energy demands for clean energy mount to meet international and national climate goals, there remains constant tension in the trade-off for where to siting large-scale offshore wind farms. Using data from a choice experiment (CE) to elicit preferences for large-scale, 3600 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind farms in Denmark, we find that respondents living far from a proposed or existing offshore wind power project have lower willingness to pay (WTP) to locate new offshore wind farms at 12 km, 18 km, or 50 km relative to 8 km from the coast. Furthermore, based on the estimated densities of existing onshore wind turbines at the postal (ZIP) code level, we find evidence of a significant relationship between existing onshore wind power development and preferences for proposed offshore wind farm locations. Finally, the spatial models point towards the fact that males and females have different spatial-related WTPs