Attitudes and Opinions of Social Media Users Towards Smart Meters’ Rollout in Turkey

Abstract

Increasing the efficiency of electricity transmission is nearing the top of the agenda in many countries around the world. Turkey, the world’s most newly industrialized country, is no different. Modernizing the current transmission grids to smart grids (SG) and the national rollout of smart meters (SM), are some of the measures taken by the government to meet the growing demand for electricity. Consumer acceptance and engagement are among the most important elements for the success of SG and SM, however, there have not been much studies done among Turkish electricity consumers. This purpose of this study is to fill this void, by detailing the attitudes, awareness and expectations among Turkish citizens regarding SM and listing recommendations for energy companies based on the findings. Through an online questionnaire, responses from 504 social media users were collected and analyzed. Results show that the consumers are open towards the acceptance of SM, but there is a need to raise awareness and knowledge through proper communication channels. The study has also revealed that a range of conventional and digital channels need to be actively used in order to enhance consumer willingness to accept SM. Increasing social interactions regarding SM is one of the key recommendations detailed by the authors.

Public Perceptions of Household IoT Smart Water “Event” Meters in the UK—Implications for Urban Water Governance

“…The regression analysis found that males, younger ages (18-34), those already with water meters and those with more other smart devices (e.g., smart speakers) were more likely to accept a SWEM if they had control over the data, if it was provided free of charge and if the meter helped reduce water bills. These findings chime with previous research on public perceptions of both water meters and energy smart meters, highlighting the importance of installation cost, an expectation of reduced water bills (Krishnamurti et al, 2012;Ipsos Mori, 2018;Chawla et al, 2020) and the protection of personal data and privacy (Horne et al, 2015;Raimi and Carrico, 2016;Warkentin et al, 2017;Chawla et al, 2020). The higher likelihood of males choosing such a meter has not been found by previous studies (Chen and Sintov, 2016;Chen et al, 2017;Nasir et al, 2020;Fettermann et al, 2021), conversely, Belton and Lunn (2020) found females were more likely to respond positively to letters about smart meters.…”

“…Using data from a national survey of the public in the UK, this article aims to explore attitudes and perceptions toward SWEMs that provide information on microcomponent household water use. We hypothesize that more environmentally-conscious people, and those who already make use of smart devices, will be more accepting of the technology (Spence et al, 2015), but that those with concerns about privacy (Horne et al, 2015;Georgiev and Schlögl, 2018) or increased costs will not (Chawla et al, 2020). Through the interpretation of our results, we aim to provide insights into the social expectations for such distributed sensor technology that can help inform future water management in UK cities and further afield.…”

“…Individuals concerned about climate change are more likely to be accepting of smart energy meters (Spence et al, 2015). Moreover, consumers are more willing to accept smart meters if they do not need to pay for installation (Chawla et al, 2020) and their bills are reduced in the long run (Krishnamurti et al, 2012). Set against these enabling factors, people's willingness to voluntarily accept smart metering technology is affected by concerns about privacy and security (Horne et al, 2015;Raimi and Carrico, 2016;Warkentin et al, 2017;Chawla et al, 2020).…”

“…Moreover, consumers are more willing to accept smart meters if they do not need to pay for installation (Chawla et al, 2020) and their bills are reduced in the long run (Krishnamurti et al, 2012). Set against these enabling factors, people's willingness to voluntarily accept smart metering technology is affected by concerns about privacy and security (Horne et al, 2015;Raimi and Carrico, 2016;Warkentin et al, 2017;Chawla et al, 2020). Furthermore, consumers are concerned about reliability and automated control (Gao and Bai, 2014), for example, should the device accidentally (or unexpectedly) switch off or present inaccurate consumption data (Balta-Ozkan et al, 2013), and about giving utilities and third-party service providers access to data that may expose their daily habits (Tonyali et al, 2018).…”

How to Foster the Adoption of Electricity Smart Meters? A Longitudinal Field Study of Residential Consumers

“…To focus on benefits of using SM, customers must be willing to accept this technology. Various aspects of community and social SM acceptance have been already explored [3,6,7,[23][24][25][27][28][29]. As in the case of any other energy technology, the lack of acceptance may lead to slowing or a halting of the development [7,30].…”