Social Research on the Energy Issue
Background & Introduction
As previously addressed, the importance and urgency to seek a feasible solution to the energy issue is undebatable. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problem, but instead a global one. In response to the urgent need, vast efforts and time have already been devoted to those relevant studies, however, only few of which is really able to be put into real applications. Actually, the biggest obscure restraining the feasible solution to alleviate the energy stress is mainly due to the huge gap between the research results and the massive industrialization. In another word, not only should we emphasize the technological advancements, but also we ought to raise a strong awareness to integrate the scientific results into real industrial application to yield concrete social values.
To understand the energy issue from a border aspect, our team carried out a social research discovering the gap between the academic research and the industrial application, especially in the context of the energy issue. The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the relevant background as well as getting the project prepared for the further industrialization. We hope to hear various opinions from different aspects, or to be concrete not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority. Only when we understand comprehensively, could we figure out a series of feasible solutions in the social context, to profoundly contribute to the world.
Our social research started as early as we just decided to work on the energy issue. We built up a long-term real-time interaction with the society, instead of just a simple glimpse, for the comprehensive understanding on the issue required continuous communications and thoughts exchanging. Generally speaking, this social research consisted of two main parts, the public questionnaire and interviews. The public questionnaire was implemented to be familiar with the general public attitudes. We carefully analyzed the data collected, and according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the data analysis, we then invited several experts from different walks of life to participate in the following theme interviews. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With their generous engagements, our team was able to further explore the project in a social context.
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Questionnaire
A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed online. In all, 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis on the data we collected. We had eventually collected 231 samples, 15 of which were cancelled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.
Interview
To deeply understand the energy issue from various aspects as well as further develop our system in the real social context, our team conducted a series of interviews with experts from all walks of life. Besides the general voices heard from the public, we discovered the opinions from the relevant industrial communit, the academic researchers and the administrative authority.
Our interviewees include the following:
Professor Qixi Mi from School of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University;
Mr. Yujun Lan from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);
Ms. Chen from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);
Ms. Yu Huang from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;
Mr. Shengbo Chen from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;
Click here to find further information about our interviews.
