Predicting smart metering acceptance by residential consumers: An Indonesian perspective

Abstract

In Indonesia, the uses of Machine to Machine (M2M) solutions continue to grow in various sectors of industry which were supported by the increasing of mobile technology usage. The number of electricity customers in Indonesia especially residential customers was 92.81% and became the highest compared to other customer groups. Since the market potential of residential customers group was quite high, the implementation of Smart Metering services provided a good business opportunity for the Telco companies in Indonesia. In order to increase the acceptance of Smart Metering, it is important to identify the key factors influenced behavior intention of residential customers to start using Smart Metering. This study predicted the key factors influenced the behavior intention of prospective users toward Smart Metering by using a Modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) model. The result revealed that there were six factors in Modified UTAUT2 which significantly influenced the behavior intention of customers toward Smart Metering, namely Price Value, Performance Expectancy, Perceived Security and Risk, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, and Facilitating Condition. Since the most influential factor was the Price Value, so the provider should be able to make Smart Metering delivers a service that enable customers to monitor electricity consumption in real time, provides notifications or alerts on the status of electricity consumption, deliver the service in accordance with the service level guarantee, and always have up to date feature in order to make the residential customers do not mind spending a reasonable cost for using the Smart Metering.