The energy-storing capacity of hydrogen may create enormous energy security benefits for islands using hydrogen energy. Social acceptability of hydrogen has been extensively studied globally in terms of its safety concerns, whereas existing Japanese literature in the area is very limited. This study conducted a questionnaire survey that examined the social acceptance of hydrogen stations among islanders in Nakajimacho, Ehime, Japan. The acceptance of hydrogen stations (HSs) was mainly determined by personal value. Renewables-based local production of hydrogen was predicted to bring more safety and an environmental improvement impact, whereas fossil fuel-based, transported hydrogen was predicted to have more of an economic development and energy security impact. At the same time, local people accepted HSs more when they predicted that installation of HSs would provide local social benefits, whether or not hydrogen was based on local production from renewables or transported fossil fuels. The result would be of value in examining the viability of the introduction of hydrogen energy in Japanese islands with an aging population.

This research aimed to answer the following research questions: what are the current challenges related to social impact assessments (SIAs) in the context of Japanese assessments of interventions and how they could be solved. The intention to raise these questions were that clear recognition of domestic SIA problems and possible directions for their solution among Japanese SIA researchers and practitioners could be the first step to solve such domestic SIA problems. This analysis was made by reviewing the past literature related to Japanese SIA activities in academic journals and extracting their important issues and challenges. Based on the relevance of these challenges, this paper further reviewed the global SIA literature in relation to ideal SIA practices to find clues for solving the problems raised in past Japanese evaluation practices. The challenges of Japanese SIAs raised were the narrow scoping, inexistence of rigorous stakeholder analysis, ex-ante and ex-post mitigation procedures especially when there are negative impacts on stakeholders, and not thorough adoption of participatory approach and qualitative methods. To solve these problems, recommendations regarding the domestic discussions on finding a desirable scoping and procedures, such as the necessity of the mandatory inclusion of negative impacts in scoping if there are such negative impacts, and ex-ante and ex-post mitigation procedures were presented. Re-examination of scoping and procedures if necessary was recommended. In addition, the validity of the adoption of participatory approach and qualitative methods in SIAs, which are indispensable in democratic society, was discussed.