A study of households’ intention towards solar panel installation case study: villagers of the northern regions of Iran

ABSTRACT

Taking into account the devastating consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore shifting energy from fossil fuels into renewable resources to achieve low-carbon societies has become one of the greatest challenges of our world. As a high-rate energy consumption country and carbon-intensive economy, Iran with its immense sun-kissed lands is greatly prone to develop the renewables’ share in its energy consumption basket. By implementing an integrated analytical model based on Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) this study has investigated households’ intention to apply solar panel technology for residential consumption. A total of 462 completed questionnaires were collected among villagers of Mazandaran to validate the proposed hypotheses by using structural equation modeling. Overall, a designed model that included the variables of compatibility, relative advantage, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) explained 23% of the variances of households’ intention. While the results also confirmed significant paths from perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) to installation intention, the study concluded that due to the weaknesses in communication channels, lack of appropriate energy culture and unprepared social structure, achieving the objectives of solar panel development is a premature target for the current context.

KEYWORDS:

• Household consumer
• solar panel technology
• diffusion of innovation theory
• technology acceptance model
• structural modeling
• Iran

Acknowledgements

This paper is an excerpt from the post-doctoral research project which was supported and financed by Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) under the grant of 97023254. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks go to Prof. Stewart Lockie for his constructive suggestions. We would also like to thanks all sociology master students of the University of Mazandaran who helped us to collect data on the cold and rainy autumn days of the region.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

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

Data availability statement

Datasets related to this article can be found at, https://doi.org/10.17632/tksp7ms69r.1, an open-source online data repository hosted at Mendeley Data

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. International Energy Agency, Renewables, analysis and forecasts to 2022, International Energy Agency. OECD/IEA, Paris.

2. International Renewable Energy Agency, Perspectives for the Energy Transition, Investment Needs for a Low-Carbon Energy System. IRENA Publications, Masdar City.

3. . Iran Renewable Energy Organization (SUNA), (http://www.suna.org.ir/home-en. html).

4. . There is a public opinion in Iran, especially in rural regions, that every survey in Iran is a governmental activity and is aimed to collect personal information or family profile to increase households ‘taxes or costs. Therefore people try to avoid confronting with this or be less honest in these situations.

5. Each one US Dollar equals 18,000 Toman while data were collected.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) under the grant of 97023254.

Notes on contributors

Sara Karimzadeh

Sara Karimzadeh is a postdoctoral researcher at Iran National Science Foundation. Her main research interests include energy transition, ethical consumerism and sustainability.

Sadegh Salehi

Sadegh Salehi is an associate professor of Sociology at University of Mazandaran, Iran, with key research interests in environmental sociology, energy and water consumption, energy transition and climate change.