Abstract
Deploying hydrogen fuelling facilities plays a critical role in providing easy access to refuelling services for hydrogen fuel cell products. This study aims to uncover how people from different countries perceive accident risk from hydrogen fuelling stations (HFSs) and discern the gap between general cognition and reality. A cross-country investigation was simultaneously implemented in Japan, Spain, and Norway in December 2022 to observe the public’s risk attitude towards technical procedures of HFS operations, i.e., hydrogen production, transportation, storage, and dispensing. A total of 2,500 participants from the three countries completed the web-based questionnaires, evaluating their level of perceived risk towards HFSs in terms of risk probability and consequence. The investigation results demonstrated differentiated risk perception towards HFSs across countries, stimulating a reflection on the essential elements of societal risk perception. Moreover, this study emphasises the gap between cognitive and actual risk by employing event tree analysis of standard HFS equipment. The empirical frequencies of failure, e.g., the rupture and leakage occurring at the compressors, trailers, vessels, dispensers, and pipes, are summarised as a baseline. The comparative results indicate that the public tends to overestimate the risks of hydrogen transportation and underestimate the risks of production, identifying perceptual inaccuracies and suggesting directions for future hydrogen knowledge dissemination from a practical point of view.
