Marius Claudy

Understanding the Attitude-Behavior Gap for Renewable Energy Systems Using Behavioral Reasoning Theory

Consumer adoption of renewable energies is an important step towards less carbon-intensive and more sustainable energy systems. But despite growing ecological awareness and articulated preferences for green products, renewable energies face slow rates of diffusion in consumer markets. This has been hard to explain given consumers’ favorability to the concept of products that lower one’s impact on the natural environment. This study uses data from 254 homeowners in Ireland to investigate the psychological process of adopting a renewable energy system – solar energy panels. Applying Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT), this research examines a proposed model in which reasons both for and against adopting solar panels mediate the relationship between consumers’ attitudes, values and adoption intentions. Results suggest the model is generally supported with both reasons for adoption and reasons against adoption having countervailing influences in the psychological processing of adoption intentions. These findings suggest that researchers and marketers should include mediating constructs, such as (i) reasons for adoption, (ii) reasons against adoption, and (iii) attitudes toward a technology when attempting to explain how consumers think about the adoption of renewable energy systems.

Going above and beyond: How sustainability culture and entrepreneurial orientation drive social sustainability supply chain practice adoption

Purpose – This paper aims to examine what drives the adoption of different social sustainability supply chain practices. Research has shown that certain factors drive the adoption of environmental sustainability practices but few focus on social supply chain practices, delineate which practices are adopted or what drives their adoption. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine the facilitative role of sustainability culture to explain the adoption of social sustainability supply chain practices: basic practices, consisting of monitoring and management systems and advanced practices, which are new product and process development and strategic redefinition. The authors then explore the role played by a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation in shaping and reinforcing the adoption of social sustainability supply chain practices. A survey of 156 supply chain managers in multiple industries in Ireland was conducted to test the relationship between the variables. Findings – The findings show that sustainab...

Beyond Economics: a Behavioural Approach to Energy Efficiency in Domestic Buildings

This paper argues that the moderate success of policies aiming to stimulate the uptake of Sustainable Energy Systems (SES) in the domestic sector is grounded in a poor understanding of the ‘consumer’. The predominant economic approach behind most policies assumes that improving the cost-benefit ratio of technologies via grants and subsidies and providing sufficient information will automatically incentivise householders’ to invest into SES. Yet, policymakers often neglect behavioural determinants such as attitudes, social norms or personal capabilities. Drawing on key findings from the economics, technology and behavioural literature, this paper proposes an integrated model to identify behavioural and contextual influences of SES adoption. It further highlights relationships between them and serves as a starting point to empirically research SES adoption, ultimately providing pragmatic answers to complex policy questions.

Exploring Antecedents of Consumer Resistance Towards Microgeneration Technologies in Ireland

The diffusion of microgeneration technologies like micro wind turbines provides great potential to reduce CO2 emissions, ease fossil fuel dependency and stabilize energy costs. The uptake of microgeneration technologies among home owners, however, remains low and they are often referred to as resistant innovations. Consumer resistance to innovations is a generally underresearched area and empirical evidence is scarce. The research presented in this study is based on a large scale study around micro wind turbines, which was conducted with home owners in the Republic of Ireland in 2009. The contribution of this study is twofold. Building on recent advances in the literature, the study firstly operationalises and empirically validates a measure of consumer resistance to green innovations. Secondly, this measure is anchored in a theoretically grounded model based around status quo bias theory (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988) to empirically test the relative influence of factors leading to consumer resistance to micro wind turbines. The proposed scale and framework are both validated via structural equation modeling techniques, providing valuable information for marketers and policymakers aiming to promote the uptake of micro wind turbines in Ireland.