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

Abstract

In 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.

Psychological consumer behavior and sustainable green food purchase

“…If they feel that the perceived financial cost is lower than the expected status projection, they will adopt environmental-friendly behavior (De Groot and Steg, 2008). Researchers believe that individuals with egoistic values show concern about an EC to fulfill their self-interest (Venugopal and Shukla, 2019).…”

Exploring the factors influencing the intention to clothing and textiles recycling among Chinese college students’: a study based on TPB and VBN

“…While the VBN theory has primarily found application in the domains of ecotourism and energy conservation ( Lee and Jan, 2018 ; Venugopal and Shukla, 2019 ; Denley et al, 2020 ; Al Mamun et al, 2022 ), its application in the context of clothing and textiles recycling has been limited. Additionally, existing research on clothing and textiles recycling has predominantly focused on community residents, with less attention given to college students as a distinct group.…”

The influence of environmental factors on ecological beliefs and ecological behaviour of energy-efficient appliance purchase

“…Belief is considered as one of the important factors for understanding human behaviour (Zhang et al, 2021). Previous ecological behaviour studies are focused on the belief components, understanding these as the result of a rational costs-benefits analysis derived from environmental behaviour (Chan et al, 2018;Venugopal & Shukla, 2019). Han (2021) explained that ecological beliefs refer to the beliefs about the relationship between human beings and the natural environment as well as the consequences of ecological protection or deterioration, based on personally valued aspects.…”