Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 237, 10 November 2019, 117737
Journal of Cleaner Production

Consumers’ intention-based influence factors of renewable power generation technology utilization: A structural equation modeling approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117737Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Renewable power technologies (RPTs) utilization influenced by diversified factors.

  • Theory of planned behavior is augmented for three additional factors.

  • Structural equation modeling is employed to estimate impact path coefficients.

  • Relative advantage and lack of electricity access positively influenced RPTs.

  • Moral norms, environmental concern and knowledge, awareness imparted neutral impact.

Abstract

Since the implementation of renewable power generation technologies (RPTs) is a multifaceted and complex procedure influenced by a diverse range of factors, it induces ever evolving traction of researchers to investigate those influence factors. The aim of this research is to investigate the factors affecting consumers' intention to utilize RPTs for domestic use in Pakistan. In order to have a better understanding of the behavioral construct of consumers to adopt or prohibit the RPTs, the current study has contributed through augmenting the structure of planned behavior theory by introducing a vital influence factor of lack of access to electricity in remote areas. The findings of the current study are derived from the calculations conducted on primary data compiled from 230 Pakistani households in provincial capitals including Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, and Peshawar, and the federal capital Islamabad through conducting a comprehensive survey. The propositions are examined employing the state of art technique called structural equation modeling (SEM). The statistical findings revealed that, on the one hand, the influence factors including subjective norms, attitudinal construct, relative advantage, perceived behavioral control, and lack of access to electricity imparted positive influence on consumers' intention to utilize RPTs in Pakistan. On the other hand, the cost is found to induce prohibition impact on consumers' intention to utilize RPTs. Notably, the moral norms, environmental concern, environmental knowledge, and awareness are revealed to impart neutral influence on consumers’ intention to utilize RPTs. Based on the empirical findings, vital and useful policy guidelines are suggested in this study.

Introduction

From some previous years, changes in atmospheric & environmental concerns have acquired the focused point in economic and political considerations in all over the world. The extreme expenditure of hydrocarbons for energy production means has an uncompromising influence on the environment, nature, and humanity all together. Exertions have been made to confirm a horizontal change over from conventional energy sources to renewable sources for energy production drives. Though, the fruitful evolution from one source to another is extremely reliant on the hard work at numerous stages and also on the contribution of all the interested parties concerned in this manner (Shih and Chou, 2011).

Industrialists and energy technology firms are essential components in this changeover practice, but lack of the accessibility of inexpensive and trustworthy energy technology, the evolution of the overall energy structure and the achievement of associated ecological objectives will only be a dream (Liu, 2016). Consequently, creation, dissemination, and implementation of technology by consumers turn out to be valuable. Though, for high-tech technologies, which is fundamental in nature (needs variations in prevailing technical and institutionalized frameworks.), and fit into the organization that is at a former stage of expansion or growth, it would be defiant to attain fruitful commercialization in segregation (Claudy et al., 2013). It has been declared that a firm is seldom competent in guaranteeing the effective commercializing of technologies. The dissemination of such high tech mostly entails collaboration among different players, organization, and provision from other interested parties (Nie and Yang, 2016). Actors encircling the trendsetter corporations can communicate information and offer an approach to associations and different means which are vital to commercialize, however, the contributions from consumers cannot be ignored in terms of enabling and quickening (Aslani, 2015). Consumers are required to make the absolute choice amongst environmental and conventional responsive results. Thus, their identification of the problems and their awareness (AWN) concerning the substitutes can turn out to be an imperative subject. Economic and environmental legislators stressed consumers' obligation and the part they can perform in accomplishing the goals that are related to the environment (Saya, 2018, Ahmad et al., 2019a, Ahmad et al., 2019b). According to Sangroya and Nayak (2017), effective commercialization entails innovation in endorsing communication and collaboration among individuals and groups. So, consumers’ behavior and response towards RPTs have turn out to be an important part in accomplishing the objectives that are related to energy and in the fulfillment of a green future as the way forward.

Pakistan, as a populated and growing country, needs plenty of energy goods to encounter its national energy necessities and retain its growth on the path. Though, irrespective of the fact that Pakistan has been granted with vast reserves and energy production ability, it is not been capable of meeting its major energy requirements and has practiced severe energy disasters (GIZ, 2016). According to the statistics given by UNDP (2018), the electricity segment is more emphasized for energy deficiencies. The space between supply and demand is fulfilled over usual load shedding. The interval of load shedding could be 7–9 h in one day in the urban areas and 8–12 h a day in remote areas, relying upon the production ability and requirement of energy. This incapability to guarantee the essential supply of energy creates the hurdle in the economic expansion of a country and has wedged the daily life of its citizens. The limited supply of electrical energy has given rise embarrassment and chaotic situation both for household users as well as industries, thus inducing them to shift towards renewables alternative. This continual hide and seek of grid electrical power has resulted in the development of entirely new market equipped with the alternative of renewables generation systems involving a variety of electrical equipment. In other words, almost each and every household usually depend on an oil-fired power generation engine, a UPS, or some rechargeable storage devices for substituting the electricity need in the absence of the grid electricity.

Pakistan is fortunate for vast renewable energy resources capacity, and the utilization of renewable power generation technologies (RPTs) may assist in curtailment of import expenses and mitigate the emissions, proposing a promising way out for the future. Regardless of having substantial power generation capacity, the utilization of sustainable power generation technologies such as solar PVs is not considered an optimal selection always (Luthra et al., 2015, Yasmin and Grundmann, 2019). Many reasons are behind the less usage of RPTs globally involving the initial expenses of RPTs, utilization of RPTs, absence of favorable policy structures, and poor environmental knowledge (Fetanat et al., 2019, Lopes et al., 2019).

Given the above, the studies on the adoption of renewable power generation technologies are scarce, especially in the case of Pakistan in terms of identification and analysis of influence factors of renewables acceptance and prohibition. The mainstream research to date has principally explored those relationships under the following headings: (i) the diversified energy sources in hand, their mutual competitiveness, and their capability to generate electrical energy (Claudy et al., 2013, Broman Toft et al., 2014), (ii) the influence on industry and the economy and emission decline and energy security (Kardooni et al., 2016, Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018), (iii) evaluation of government schemes and policies, and studies of the impediments that the energy sector is coping with (Hossain, 2019). Contrariwise, the studies in the domain of consumers’ intention to utilize RPTs (IUT) have largely remained untouched. Additionally, based on the lack of available information, it is also challenging for organizations, government bodies, legislators, and other involved stakeholders to devise implementable policies and develop procedures to promote the consumers to acquire renewable-based solutions and hence improving the acceptance and utilization of the said technologies.

This study systematically revisits, identifies and analyses the dimensions influencing the consumers’ intention to utilize RPTs for household purpose with particular focus on (i) lack of electricity access in remote areas, (ii) relative advantage, (iii) environmental knowledge, and (iv) moral norms in perspective of Pakistan. In this regard, the previous studies considered some of those factors in other forms. For instance, the relative advantage has been taken to analyze its impact on renewable energy in a broad spectrum (Zahari and Esa, 2016). Besides, Tan et al. (2017) have analyzed the impact of environmental knowledge and moral norms on energy-efficient appliances. In contrast to previous researches, the current work has considered these factors in perspective of consideration of RPTs market. However, none of the studies has been known to consider the influence of lack of electricity access in remote areas in any perspective. Along these lines, this work contributed to the existing body of knowledge through bridging all these gaps. In order to test the hypothesized proposition, the calculations are based on the primary data compiled from 230 Pakistani households in provincial capitals (Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, and Peshawar) as well as in federal capital (Islamabad) through conducting questionnaires deriving the novel findings based on the state of art structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The main findings substantiated that lack of electricity access in remote areas and relative advantage positively contributed to IUT while environmental knowledge and moral norms imparted no significant contribution to IUT. The findings of current work provide with useful policy implications.

Moreover, the present work has extended findings dissimilar to the previous works. For instance, as mentioned earlier, the lack of electricity access in remote areas has never been considered as the potential influence factor of the renewable power generation technologies’ adoption. Referring to this, the lack of electricity access in remote areas proved to be significant driver in the process of adoption of renewable power generation technologies. Similarly, relative advantage also remained important inclusion in the behavioral framework of the theory of planned behavior. In contrast to this, environmental knowledge played an insignificant role in the adoption process. In summary, the present work preserves the novel findings in contrast to the existing body of knowledge.

Pertaining to the relevance of results, though the results are based on a survey conducted in a particular geographic location (Pakistan), however, the implication of those results expose the phenomenon of consumer's intention-based influence factors to affect their adoption behavior of renewable power generation technologies. In this regard, the results would not be considered particular to some geographical location. Furthermore, the novel factors including relative advantage, environmental knowledge, and lack of electricity in remote areas may prevail in almost each developing economy or state. Thus, the case of Pakistan is considered as a representative sample to identify a phenomenon, and thus the results are not case-specific but highlight the impact of additional influence factors on renewable power generation technologies. Additionally, the structural equation modeling (SEM) in this particular case is the most appropriate methodological option because the latent (unobserved) variables constructed are only feasible to be tested though the SEM application. Thus, it holds the SEM to be a state-of-art technique to be employed.

The remaining of the study is structured as follows: Section 2 is based on the modeling framework. Section 3 deals with the formulation of hypotheses. Section 4 is based on methodology. Section 5 comprises of the discussions on results. Section 6 concludes the study and explains policy propositions. Finally, section 7 documents the limitations and future research directions.

Section snippets

Modeling framework

The mainstream research has focused on the fact that the decision-making process by consumers is based on a set of complex processes, and a buying decision may have been prejudiced by numerous different features in a true manner. Those factors may involve social, economic, socio-economic, psychological, and physiological factors (Ajzen, 1991). In order to comprehend the multifaceted form decisions of buying by consumers, a number of modeling structures and empirical frameworks are employed in

Cost of renewable power generation technology

Consumers evaluate the information of price in order to ascertain the financial sacrifices they do while buying (Al-Marri et al., 2018, Swider et al., 2008). Cost (C) is observed as one of the primary obstacles to the acceptance of RPTs (Komendantova and Yazdanpanah, 2017). The decrease in overall RPTs cost has been observed during the passing years. (McDonagh et al., 2019, Yong et al., 2017). However, it is still to extend at the level where it can contest with prevailing solutions (Hartmann

Data compilation and description

The scale items for determining the cost of RPTs (CRPT), awareness (AWN), and perceived behavioral control (BC) are acquired from the empirical examination by previous studies (e.g., Kardooni et al., 2016). Next, the scale items regarding environmental concern (ENC) are obtained from the studies of Zhang et al. (2015) and Anderson and Gerbing (1988). Further, the scale items utilized for the measurement of the attitudinal construct (ATC) and the consumers’ intention to utilize RPTs (IUT) are

Link between cost and intention to utilize RPTs

The calculations aid our suppositions; the results disclose the undesirable outcome on consumers' intention of using RPTs. The solutions that are focused on renewable power are expensive contrasted to conventional energy production practices and the additional expenses of buying turn out to be an obstacle to their acceptance. For example, at present, setting up of photovoltaic for domestic consumers expense approximately four or five times additional to other power production techniques

Conclusions and policy propositions

The aim of this study is to explore the factors influencing the consumers’ intention to utilize RPTs for domestic purpose. This analysis finds to discourse this task by focusing on the essential dynamics affecting the embracement and acceptance of RPTs and by examining the degree to which they can perform a specific role in a local framework.

Efforts have been made to discover the influence of particular factors in the perspective of our country and to ascertain the intensity of these aspects to

Limitations and future research directions

There are several limitations of this work which should be taken into consideration while conducting future research in this domain. First, the sampling survey conducted was based on respondents from both urban and rural settings, and thus, the findings were based on mixed responses from rural and urban respondents. It would yield better findings in terms of comparisons if the data were partitioned into rural and urban-based data. Second, the renewable energy technologies embark difference in

Acknowledgments

This study is funded by the 2018 Key Projects of Philosophy Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education, China (grant number 18JZD032). The authors are grateful to the editor Yutao Wang and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and valuable suggestions to improve this work.

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