An assessment of consumers’ willingness to utilize solar energy in China: End-users’ perspective

Climate change issues have become significant challenges in China's sustainable growth due to the excessive use of fossil fuels. Though, the Chinese government has successfully utilized solar energy resources to overcome these issues. However, studies focusing on assessing consumers’ willingness to utilize solar energy are scarce in the country. This study aims to address this research gap by analyzing the influence of factors on consumers’ willingness to utilize solar energy for household purposes. Combined with the existing consumers’ intention factors, the study has also contributed by augmenting the theoretical mechanism of the Theory of Planned Behavior by including three novel factors (perception about self-effectiveness, belief of solar energy benefits, and perception of neighbors’ participation) to comprehensively analyze the willingness of Chinese consumers. Analysis is performed on questionnaire data of 355 households in the four largest cities of Hunan province, such as Changsha, Hengyang, Yueyang, and Zhuzhou, by accompanying an inclusive survey. Structural Equation Modeling has been employed to evaluate and scrutinize the formulated suppositions. The findings disclose that the intention factors, i.e., perception about self-effectiveness, environmental concern, awareness of solar energy, and belief of solar energy benefits impart positive effects on consumers’ willingness to utilize solar energy, while, cost of solar energy has a negative effect. Notably, perception of neighbors’ participation has an insignificant effect. Research outcomes emphasize transforming social norms, raise consumers’ awareness, redesign policy frameworks, and highlight the paybacks that solar energy offers by integrative and consistent efforts.