PREDICTING CONSUMERS’ GREEN PURCHASE INTENTION: A CASE OF RESIDENTIAL ROOFTOP SOLAR PANEL SYSTEMS IN INDIA

Abstract

Marketing of green energy products has been a key challenge as they are considerably new and the level of awareness is still in its early stages, especially in countries like India. Companies like Reliance Power, Adani Power, Tata Power, and others are trying to penetrate and gain market of green energy products/technologies such as solar panel systems and solar water heaters. The adoption of these technologies has been regarded as a promising means for the overall development of humankind and environmental sustainability. Among various green energy products/technologies, the adoption of solar panel systems has received a great amount of interest among researchers, green energy marketers, and practitioners in recent years due to the fact that it positively contributes to the society and environment. Large-scale or commercial-level solar projects have seen widespread adoption in many developing countries like India. However, the acceptance of small-scale solar projects which are installed at local level (i.e., residential rooftop solar panel systems (SPS)) is still at a nascent stage. There is consensus in the literature that a variety of socio-psychological and contextual factors influence consumers’ purchase behavior toward such green energy technologies. Therefore, to design effective marketing strategies and accelerate the adoption of residential rooftop solar panel systems, it is important to understand consumers’ perceptions and purchase intentions. With the growing interest in green energy marketing and consumer behavior research, the standard constructs of the theory of planned behavior have been extensively adapted in prior studies and produced mixed findings while assessing their effect on consumer green energy buying intention or behavior, which call for further research on verifying the robustness of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in the present context. Furthermore, a closed investigation of relevant green energy marketing literature suggests that empirical evidence on the role of some important environmental factors, namely green self-identity, green trust, perceived consumer effectiveness in explaining people’s residential rooftop SPS adoption behavior is unexplored. In addition, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how incentive policy reinforce or transform consumers’ perceptions regarding SPS adoption. Furthermore, authors in prior studies have described the media implications regarding the encouragement of consumers’ perceptions or beliefs, but none have empirically examined its impact on behavioral outcomes, viz., i) perceived usefulness, ii) perceived ease of use, ii) attitude, and iv) purchase intention of green energy technology (i.e., SPS). Likewise, prior studies do not provide a comprehensive understanding of how perceived inconveniences of adopting SPS affect consumers’ perception of ease of use, usefulness, and purchase intention. All of the above research gaps demand further academic attention to better understand consumers’ purchase intention or behavior towards residential rooftop SPS. In response to the aforementioned research gaps, this research work first aims to examine the validity and robustness of the TPB in predicting consumers’ green energy purchase behavior. For that, a total of 35 sample studies comprising 148 correlations are retrieved from the literature and synthesized with the help of a meta-analysis technique. In the second study, a conceptual framework is developed based on the TPB model and extended with four psychological factors: green trust, green self-identity, perceived consumer effectiveness, and perceived government subsidy policy to determine consumers’ intention to purchase residential rooftop solar panel systems (SPS). The third study develops a conceptual framework using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and adds six psychological constructs, including media coverage of green energy technology messages, perceived incentives policy, overall perceived cost, perceived inconveniences, perceived enjoyment, and media exposure to environmental messages into TAM to explore the determinants of residential rooftop SPS purchase behavior. To validate these extended models, data were collected in two phases from three states of the northern part of India, namely, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Haryana. A total of 292 valid responses were collected via an online survey for study two, and 585 responses were gathered via paper-based and tablet-based questionnaire surveys for study three. The collected data were analyzed using a two-stage structural equation modelling technique of partial least squares consisting of measurement and structural model. The findings of the first study reveal that TPB antecedents are effective correlates of behavioral intention, suggesting the efficacy of the TPB model in the green energy behavioral context. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that different cross-cultural factors moderate relative strength between TPB constructs and behavioral intention. The findings of the second study reveal that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived consumer effectiveness, and incentives policy measures positively affect consumers’ purchase intention of SPS. It also unveils that perceived incentives policy moderates the association between attitude, green trust, perceived consumer effectiveness, subjective norms, and SPS purchase intention. In the third study, the results verify all the relationships of the conceptual framework except for the non-significant relationship between media exposure and purchase intention of SPS. The moderation effect of the perceived incentives policy between perceived cost and SPS purchase intention is also supported. Overall, the conceptual frameworks developed in study two and study three attain a prediction accuracy of 54.2% and 52.7%, respectively, thereby indicating the substantial and reasonable explanation of both models. The findings of the three studies add significant value to academic research in several ways. It supports the utility of the TPB first time in the green energy behavioral domain and provides evidence on under what circumstances the consumers’ attitude, social norms, and control beliefs can affect their green energy behavior. Further, it extends the green energy literature by highlighting the moderating role of perceived subsidy/incentives policy on the relationship between psychological variables (i.e., TPB constructs, green trust, green self-identity, and perceived consumer effectiveness) and the purchase intention of SPS. Lastly, it advances the existing literature by integrating previously neglected important psychological and contextual factors into the TAM model as the distal determinants of SPS purchase intention. Apart from this, the findings also reveal the moderation effect of perceived incentives policy on the relationship between perceived cost and purchase intention of SPS, seldom examined in the context of green energy. Consequently, the findings obtained through three different studies in this thesis offer insightful practical implications for solar suppliers, public policymakers, or other stakeholders to effectively design relevant marketing tools and implement policy measures to accelerate residential rooftop SPS adoption in Indian market