Investigating the Determinants of the Adoption of Solar Photovoltaic Systems—Citizen’s Perspectives of Two Developing Countries

Abstract

The adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is seen as an important part of the sustainable energy transition. In this regard, it is crucial to identify the determinants of solar (PV) systems’ adoption to facilitate this process. Therefore, this article aims to examine the determinants of SPVS adoption by contrasting the relationships in a cross-cultural environment. For the accomplishment of the purpose, this paper follows a quantitative method in which data is analysed by adopting the PLS-SEM approach using SmartPLS 3.3.9. After analysing the collected data of 464 consumers from Somalia and Pakistan, it is found that perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, compatibility, observability, and perceived trust are significant predictors. However, no significant difference in influencing determinants has been observed between the two cultures using multi-group analysis. Further, perceived trust is not revealed as a significant determinant of behavioural intention in the Somalian context. The strongest relationship is found between attitude and behavioural intention in both cultures. In Somalia, the results reveal a variance of 49% in attitudes and 51% in intention to adopt SPVSs. In Pakistan, a variance of 60.1% in attitudes and 76.8% in intention to adopt SPVSs is found. Implications for both academics and managers to scale-up the adoption of SPVSs are made.

A behavioral study on villagers’ adoption intention and carbon neutrality toward rooftop solar photovoltaic systems in India

“…DOI theory, PMT and TPB have been used to examine the villagers' behavioral intentions and carbon neutrality recognition toward adopting the RSPV systems. The extent of the literature reveals that the DOI theory (Gerdesics et al, 2013;Wolske et al, 2017;Kurdgelashvili et al, 2019;Mohandes et al, 2019;Busic-Sontic and Fuerst, 2018;Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018;Bondio et al, 2018;Barrie and Cruickshank, 2017;Pathania et al, 2017;Simpson and Clifton, 2017;Wolske et al, 2017;Karakaya et al, 2015;Sriwannawita and Laestadiusb, 2015;Islam, 2014;Barnes et al, 2022;Karimzadeh and Salehi, 2021;Kumar and Kaushik, 2022;Ahmed et al, 2022), PMT (Kim et al, 2013;Bockarjova and Steg, 2014;Wolske et al, 2017;Rainear and Christensen, 2017;Wang et al, 2019;Kothe et al, 2019) and TPB (Wang et al, 2014;Li et al, 2013;Rai and Robinson, 2015;Korcaj et al, 2015;Yun and Lee, 2015;Joshi and Rahman, 2015;Yazdanpanah et al, 2015;Chen, 2016;Gao et al, 2017;Wolske et al, 2017;Shi et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2019;Abreu et al, 2019;Arroyo and Carrete, 2019;...…”

“…Compatibility as an important dimension of DOI has a significant positive effect on customers' attitudes toward the adoption intention of solar PV systems (Ahmed et al, 2022;Reyes-Mercado and Rajagopal, 2017). Likewise, the impact of compatibility on users' attitudes toward adopting renewable energy technologies is affirmative (Reyes-Mercado andRajagopal, 2017 Faiers et al, 2007).…”

“…Likewise, the impact of compatibility on users' attitudes toward adopting renewable energy technologies is affirmative (Reyes-Mercado andRajagopal, 2017 Faiers et al, 2007). More compatibility with solar energy systems in the present climate and environment lead to a strong likelihood and attitude of customers toward solar product adoption (Ahmed et al, 2022;Reyes-Mercado and Rajagopal, 2017). Simplicity is the physical and mental effort required to use innovation (Md Nor et al, 2010).…”

“…A higher level of perceived observability of innovation would increase the probability of an innovation being adopted by people (Lin and Chen, 2012). In the framework of developing countries, Ahmed et al (2022) found that customers' attitude toward adopting solar PV systems is significantly influenced by observability. Wolske et al (2017) revealed that five dimensions of residential PV systems, i.e.…”

“…Individuals' attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control are significant predictors of their behavioral intention toward pollution control (Wang et al, 2019). Recently, environment-friendly technological innovative products have been largely adopted by customers in domestic as well international markets (Ahmed et al, 2022). Numerous studies reveal customer attitude in the framework of adoption intentions toward solar energy (Yazdanpanah et al, 2015;Sun et al, 2020;Alam and Fathima, 2022;Bekti et al, 2022;Ahmed et al, 2022;Fathima et al, 2022), subjective norms (Masrahi et al, 2021;Alam and Fathima, 2022) and perceived behavior control (Yazdanpanah et al, 2015;Masrahi et al, 2021;Fathima et al, 2022) have a positive and significant impact on their behavioral intention to adopt rooftop solar PV systems as the source of renewable energy.…”