An Empirical Investigation of Consumer Resistance to Green Product Innovation

Responding to the sustainability imperative has emerged as a key challenge and opportunity for businesses. Developing and marketing innovative ―green‖ products in particular can be a vital strategy for businesses to increase productivity, develop new markets, improve corporate image and ultimately attain competitive advantage. But despite consumer sensitisation towards environmental issues, many sustainable products face slow rates of diffusion in mainstream markets as consumers‘ green preferences regularly fail to translate into adoption behaviour. In this thesis we take a consumer resistance perspective to investigate empirically the so-called attitude–behaviour gap in the context of green product innovation. The aim of this thesis is to advance theoretically and empirically our understanding of consumer resistance, to identify consumers‘ motives for resisting green innovation and to highlight strategic implications for marketers and policy makers. The research was conducted in the context of microgeneration – innovative technologies that can be adopted by households to produce heat and electricity from renewable energy. Microgeneration technologies are green innovations, which have experienced slow rates of diffusion and thus provide a suitable context for this research. Two national consumer surveys (n = 1010; n = 1012) were conducted to investigate specifically three research issues including consumers‘ passive resistance (i.e. awareness), active resistance (i.e. postponement, rejection and opposition) and willingness to pay for microgeneration technologies. The theoretical contribution of this study is thus threefold. First, the findings contribute to innovation literature by highlighting the importance of passive resistance in the innovation adoption process and by stressing methodological implications for the design of adoption of innovation studies. Second, the thesis contributes to the resistance literature by developing, testing and validating a new measure of active resistance behaviours. The design of the measure was built on a recent conceptualisation by Kleijnen et al. (2009) and our scale is shown to be a robust measurement instrument that accounts for more variance in consumers‘ resistance behaviour than conventional measures such as intention to adopt or attitude towards adoption scales. Third, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature in the energy policy domain, which questions the predominant economic perspective and gravitates towards alternative explanations of human decision making to explain and encourage behavioural change. In conclusion, the analysis significantly fills the paucity of empirical research in the area of consumer resistance, shedding light on consumers‘ motives to resist green product innovation and providing strategic recommendations for innovation managers and policy makers

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

Piggy in the Middle: How Direct Customer Power Affects First-Tier Suppliers’ Adoption of Socially Responsible Procurement Practices and Performance

Companies are faced with a choice of which type of power to use in their efforts to persuade their first-tier suppliers to adopt socially responsible procurement practices with key second-tier suppliers. However, we know little about how first-tier suppliers will react to different types of power and which are most effective in encouraging the adoption of socially responsible procurement practices. We are also ignorant of the impact of these practices on first-tier suppliers’ performance. This paper uses bases of power theory to examine the impact of buyer companies’ power usage (non-mediated and mediated) on first-tier suppliers’ adoption of socially responsible procurement practices (process-based and market-based) with their own (second-tier) suppliers. We surveyed managers responsible for sustainable supply chain management in 156 firms and analyzed the results using structural equation modeling. Our findings show that non-mediated power use (expert and referent) influences the adoption of process-based and market-based practices, while mediated power use (coercion, legitimacy, and reward) has no significant impact on the adoption of either type of practice. Additionally, we find that the adoption of market-based socially responsible procurement practices leads to enhanced performance for first-tier suppliers who adopt these practices with their second-tier suppliers

Consumer Resistance to Green Innovations: Developing a New Scale and an Underlying Framework

The development and marketing of green innovations provide great potential to reduce carbon emissions, ease fossil fuel dependency and stabilize energy costs. The diffusion of many green innovations among consumers, however, remains low and they are often referred to as resistant innovations. Consumer resistance to green innovations is a generally under-researched area and empirical evidence is scarce. The objective of this study is therefore twofold. Building on recent advances in the literature, the study firstly aims to operationalize and empirically validate a measure of consumer resistance to green innovations. Secondly, the research aims to anchor this measure in a theoretically grounded model based around status quo bias theory (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988) and empirically test the relative influence of factors leading to consumer resistance to green innovations. The research presented in this study is based on a large scale study of homeowners in the Republic of Ireland. The proposed scale and framework are both empirically validated via structural equation modeling techniques, providing valuable information for marketers and policymakers

Consumer Awareness in the Adoption of Microgeneration Technologies: an Empirical Investigation in the Republic of Ireland

Despite major policy and marketing efforts, the uptake of microgeneration technologies in most European countries remains low. Whereas most academic studies and policy reports aim to identify the underlying reasons why people buy these new technologies, they often fail to assess the general level of consumer awareness. The process of adopting an innovation, however, shows that awareness is a prerequisite which needs to be understood before adoption can be addressed. This paper takes a closer look at awareness of microgeneration and presents the results from a nationally representative study conducted in the Republic of Ireland. Findings from logistic regressions clearly indicate that awareness varies significantly between the individual technologies and customer segments. The paper concludes with implications for policy makers and marketers aiming to promote microgeneration technologies in consumer markets

Exploring the Role of AI Explanations in Delivering Rejection Messages: A Comparative Analysis of Organizational Justice Perceptions between HR and AI

The increasing use of AI decision systems in recruitment processes has created challenges, including potential resistance from job applicants. To address this issue, drawing on organizational justice theory, we identify dimensions of AI explanations in the employment context and examine their impact on job applicants\u27 perceptions of organizational justice. We conducted an experiment to understand applicants\u27 reactions to AI versus HR managers without explanations and examined the impact of AI explanations on organizational justice perceptions and acceptance intention. Our findings show that without explanation, AI is perceived as lower organizational just and acceptance intention compared to HR managers. Organizational justice mediates the effects between outcome/process explanations of AI on acceptance intention. However, outcome explanations have a stronger impact compared to process explanations. Our study contributes to understanding explanation structures for AI-based recruitment and offers practical implications for developing explanations that improve the perceived justice of AI recruitment systems

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

The Diffusion of Microgeneration Technologies.: Assessing the Influence of Perceived Product Characteristics on Home Owners’ Willingness to Pay

This study presents empirical insight into willingness to pay (WTP) for microgeneration technologies and the relative influence of subjective consumer perceptions. First, we apply a double-bounded-contingent valuation method to elicit Irish home owners’ willingness to pay for micro wind turbines, wood pellet boilers, solar panels and solar water heaters. Utilizing findings from the adoption of innovation literature, in a second step, we assess the influence of different antecedents on WTP for each of the four technologies, including (1) home owners’ perception of product characteristics, (2) normative influences, and (3) socio demographic characteristics. Our results show that WTP varies significantly between the four technologies. More importantly, however, home owners’ hold different beliefs about the respective technologies, which significantly influence their WTP. The results provide valuable information for marketers and policy makers, aiming to promote microgeneration technologies more effectively in consumer markets

Home Owners’ Attitudes, Perceptions and Willingness to Pay for Microgeneration Technologies

This report evaluates Irish home owners’ perceptions, attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for microgeneration technologies, including photovoltaic (solar panels),[1] solar water heaters, micro wind turbines and wood pellet boilers. The data presented in the report stem from two large-scale surveys, both designed by Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and commissioned on behalf of Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI) and DIT. The first study gathered data on Irish people’s general awareness of microgeneration technologies and was conducted in March 2009. The second and main survey targeted Irish home owners in order to understand their perceptions of and attitudes to microgeneration. The survey was designed based on the findings from a series of exploratory face-to-face interviews with home owners and an extensive review of the available evidence around microgeneration. Both studies were administered by TNS MRBI via computer-assisted telephone interviews. The report is structured as follows. Part I presents the research methodology and findings from an awareness study, discussing differences in the level of awareness between the respective microgeneration technologies and consumer segments. Part II presents the findings from the large-scale field survey, breaking the analysis into four parts. It discusses Irish home owners’ WTP for the respective microgeneration technologies and analyses differences in WTP between socioeconomic groups. The findings show significant differences in WTP between the technologies. Part III compares home owners’ attitudes and perceptions of product characteristics between the four microgeneration technologies. Part IV takes a different perspective, evaluating differences in attitudes and perceptions between three distinct groups of home owners, i.e. potential adopters, undecided and rejecters. Part V evaluates Irish home owners’ intention to buy these technologies and tests the influence of some of the perceptions, attitudes and social norms that have been discussed. [1] Because of the low level of familiarity with the term ‘photovoltaic panels’, they are referred to in this report as ‘solar panels’