Between hesitation and decisiveness—Understanding consumers' ego, altruism, and eagerness to pay for renewable energy

Abstract

AbstractIn our study, we examined the role of consumers' egoism and social and biospheric altruism in influencing their willingness to adopt renewable energy. Past research has suggested that the social, biospheric, and egoistic values and beliefs of energy consumers influence their cognitive decision‐making mechanisms. However, studies have not compared and contrasted the effects of different altruistic values on specific environmental behaviors. To address this problem, we drew on the theories of value–belief–norm and paradox to propose that social and biospheric altruistic values have diverse effects on renewable energy adoption. We observed that biospheric altruism is positively associated with the adoption of renewable energy and social altruism is negatively associated with the adoption of renewable energy. Contrary to the propositions of the theory of paradox, we observed that egoistic values measured in terms of financial scarcity reduced the paradoxical nature of social and biospheric altruism. In our study, we used partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data. We analyzed 140 responses from the residential energy consumers of New Brunswick, Canada. Our study underscores the claims of value–belief–norm theory. Further, it adds to the theory of paradox. The findings from this study help guide utilities on how to approach different consumers with specific new sustainable and renewable energy products and services. Moreover, the study throws light on how the policy makers should design energy policy‐related messages to specific consumer segments.