This paper aims at analysing the factors, which motivate communities to resist the installation of wind farms in their vicinity. To this end, the choice experiment methodology was employed in communities in two Greek Aegean Islands to assess the determinants of preferences towards different wind-farm projects. Unlike other studies, the willingness to accept welfare measure was adopted. The results of our analysis show that the conservation status of the area where the wind farms are to be installed, along with the governance characteristics of the planning procedure are the most important determinants of local community welfare in relation to wind farms. In contrast to other studies, we find that the physical attributes of wind farms appear to be of less relative importance from a local community welfare point of view. Implications for the EU's future energy policy are drawn. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.