At past POW was associated with security. People believed POS systems would not be as secure as POW. While they might not be but it's seen that they are secure enough for the people to use them without any issue. That's why there's an ever increasing number of POS coins and at current time, people don't care if the coin is POW or POS. A less energy intense POW is welcome as it would have benefits of both side but that feature alone won't make it a success. They'd need to go through the process of every coin to get the trust of people. In short, the algorithm is not a huge concern, the concern is its use and popularity.
That is not really the reason, we have more POS coins because no one in his right mind is going to use their hash rate to mine a useless coin, and since those developers cannot allow to project an image of their project being disregarded in this way, then they prefer to go POS.
Also you are mistaken when you say that people do not care about a coin being POS or POW, those that invest in bitcoin care, it is just that those that just want to speculate with the price of shitcoins could care less about it.