Financing wind energy projects: An extended theory of planned behavior approach to explain private households’ wind energy investment intentions in Germany

Abstract

Socially responsible investment (SRI) is an investment strategy which complies with ethical, social, environmental or corporate governance criteria. Investments in renewable energies are commonly regarded as complying with SRI principles. This study aims to deepen the understanding of individuals' intentions to invest in wind energy. As an underlying framework the Theory of Planned Behavior's constructs attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control were used and statistically tested with an online-survey of 592 participants in 2014. Further, this theory was extended by adding the constructs consumption profile and investor profile to the framework. With the inclusion of the two additional constructs the theoretical model turns to be very suitable as it doubled the share of explained variance of behavioral intention from 25% to 50% compared to the Theory of Planned Behavior. The analysis further shows that subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, consumption profile and investor experience have statistically significant influence on investment intentions in wind energy. However, attitudes towards wind energy investments are not a significant predictor of investment intentions. We conclude that, apart from the scientific implications of our results, our findings have practical applications for the conceptual design of wind energy investments.