Stakeholder perceptions and AHP pairwise comparisons for sustainable floating photovoltaic deployment on lakes

This dataset contains anonymised stakeholder survey responses collected to investigate perceptions of floating photovoltaic (FPV) deployment and to derive criterion weights for an integrated multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) of sustainable FPV lake coverage. The questionnaire combined two components: Stakeholder perception assessment: Questions addressing the perceived contribution of FPV to the energy transition and climate change mitigation, as well as potential conflicts with existing lake uses and landscape aesthetics. Scenario-based questions were used to identify individual acceptance thresholds for FPV deployment. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP): Fifteen pairwise comparisons among six sustainability criteria using Saaty's 1–9 scale. The criteria covered three ecological aspects (water quality, water balance and thermal lake characteristics), one economic aspect (electricity yield and economic performance) and two social aspects (usage competition and landscape impact). The dataset comprises 183 anonymised survey responses from experts, students and non-experts. Of these, 182 contain complete AHP pairwise comparison matrices. The dataset retains the incomplete response for transparency. The data are provided as a UTF-8 encoded CSV file with 37 variables. An accompanying metadata dictionary documents the variable definitions, response coding, pairwise comparison structure and handling of missing values. Research context The survey data support the study Sustainable Floating Solar Deployment on Lakes: Linking Public Perception and Site Suitability through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. The study integrates stakeholder-derived criterion weights with site-specific ecological, economic and social sustainable surface coverage (SSC) optima for three European water bodies: Lake Leimersheim (Germany), Lake Sekdoorn (Netherlands) and Lake Toules (Switzerland). The present dataset contains the questionnaire responses rather than the underlying lake monitoring measurements or complete model outputs. Related dataset FPV monitoring data associated with the research are available separately on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21156967 Data reuse The dataset can support further analyses of stakeholder preferences, AHP consistency, sustainability criteria and social acceptance of floating photovoltaic systems. Respondent identifiers have been randomly assigned for publication, and directly identifying personal information is not included in the published variable set. Users should consult the accompanying metadata dictionary for details of the response coding and methodological limitations.