Effects of trust and perceived benefits on consumer adoption of smart grid technologies: a mediation analysis

ABSTRACT

End-customers are expected to play an increasingly important role in the future of smart grids. However, customer adoption of smart grid technologies has been hindered by a lack of trust in the energy sector. This study investigates the relationships between customer trust in companies in the energy sector, the perceived benefits of smart grid technologies and customer intention to use smart grid technologies. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey of Finnish households, and using structural equation modelling, examined the effects of competence-based trust, integrity-based trust, perceived financial benefits and perceived environmental benefits. Our results show that trust, perceived benefits, and usage intention are positively associated with each other. Neither competence-based nor integrity-based trust had a direct effect on usage intentions, indicating that the effects of trust on usage intentions are fully mediated by perceived benefits. Therefore, increasing customer trust in can indirectly improve the adoption of smart grid technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart grid
• technology acceptance
• trust
• perceived benefits
• structural equation modelling
• mediation

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Koneen Säätiö for funding this research. The authors also want to thank Pohjois-Karjalan Sähkö for distributing the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

CRediT author statement

Petteri Siitonen: Conceptualisation; Data curation; Formal Analysis; Funding acquisition; Methodology; Software; Visualisation; Writing – original draft. Samuli Honkapuro: Conceptualisation; Funding acquisition; Methodology; Writing – review & editing; Supervision. Salla Annala: Conceptualisation; Methodology; Writing – review & editing; Supervision. Annika Wolff: Conceptualisation; Methodology; Writing – review & editing; Supervision.

Data availability statement

The authors do not have permission to share data.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Koneen Säätiö under grant 202201616.