Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SECTION A GROUP NO 1
G KARTHIKEYAN PGP/23/015
With the Jawaharlal National Solar Mission (2015), India is planning to farm 100 GW+ of solar
power by 2022. We have achieved 14 GW solar installation base by the end of 2017 and its
cumulative solar photovoltaic installation base was 23 GW as of mid-2018. The advantage of
promoting solar panel use is due to the tropical climate of some regions in India which means
more energy can be harnessed through sun’s radiation. For the purpose of this study, we are
restricting ourselves to only Maharashtra state where Maharashtra I solar power plant is
operational with a nameplate capacity of 67 MW.
With help of Depth interview with some of the participants we identified a few sets of concerns
which were government subsidy and bureaucracy, Cost, Maintenance, Social Influence
Environmental concern, Installation efforts and Aesthetics. These were factors which were
identified will be understood in depth using a survey and analysing the degree of influence by
each of the factor.
Even with all the promotions to use clean sources of energy such as solar energy, wind energy
and hydropower etc., the full-scale use of these are still very much at infancy stage. The shift
to cleaner energy sources can only be driven by various technical, financial and institutional
constraints. Despite the government’s effort to encourage solar panel usage, several factors are
affecting the solar photovoltaic industry, most crucial of them might be the barriers to the
adoption of domestic solar panel because of human resistance to change and acceptance of the
solar technology. These barriers may prove to be the bottleneck that affect the growth of this
industry in India.
Literature Review
Theory of Reasoned Action (1975) or TRA by Fishbein and Ajzen’s has been basis of various
consumer behaviour studies main aim was to forecast and gain insight into individual’s
intention to purchase i.e. to point out which factor drives consumer to buy concerned product
or service. According to Gotschi et al. (2010) and Ng et al. (2009), TRA is a great theory to
predict green purchase behaviour. For example, Abdul Wahid et al., 2011 applied TRA to
explain factors influencing the green purchase behaviour.
While applying TRA it is important to check whether current scenario / product met the three
assumption of TRA theory. First, consumers are assumed to evaluate the impact of their actions
before they make decision to perform or not of a specific behaviour. Second, consumers are
assumed realistic individuals and would make efficient use of information accessible to them.
Third, purchase intention is assumed to be totally under consumer’s control (Fishbein & Ajzen,
1975). According to TRA, beliefs are the antecedent of attitude and subjective norms.
Consequently, both attitude and subjective norms determine behavioural intention and then
actual behaviour. Similar to TRA, Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DIT) is further extension
to study which help to understand the adoption of new product / technology. But this DIT study
is out of scope of current research and can be done in future.
Nik Abdul Aziz et.al. studied the factor influencing the consumer intention to purchase green
energy (solar panel) found out that only four variables, perceived cost and maintenance,
product knowledge and experience, social norms and product benefits show direct impacts on
consumers’ solar panel purchase intention which was consistent with the previous research.
But their study also shows insignificant relation with perceived government policies which is
in consistent with past studies.
Hypothesis
Following the literature, in country like India, government support for green energy is given
state-wise. Depending on the region and geographical factor state budget varies. The extent to
which this factor influence also varies. In order to study the influence of government
support/subsidies/initiatives this study will be restricted to only one India.
With help of Depth interview with some of the participants we identified a few sets of concerns
which were refined. These were factors which were identified will be understood in depth. We
started with following assumptions
Methodology
Sampling:
This study is correlational and it is done in non-contrived settings. Survey was created using
Google form and data was collected. Random sampling was used to get responses. Sampling
size was determined based on number of variables. Since in literature, advised number of
respondents is 20 x number of variables.
With help of Depth interview with some of the participants we identified a few sets of concerns
which were government subsidy and bureaucracy, Cost, Maintenance, Social Influence
Environmental concern, Installation efforts and Aesthetics. These were factors which were
identified will be understood in depth using a survey and analysing the degree of influence by
each of the factor.
The questionnaire was divided into subsections to collect consumer demographic profile and
all seven variables to be measured. All the responses were measured in Likert-type scale; 1 for
strongly disagree to 5 for strongly agree.
We have incorporated question which are inverse of the related factors to avoid people
responding casually.
Questionnaire
Government initiative
Cost
Maintenance effort
• My friends and relatives are adopting solar products, that is why I want to buy one
Environmental concern
• When I use green electricity in my household, I reduce air pollution. When I use
green electricity in my household, I fight climate change.
• The seriousness of environmental problems is exaggerated by environmentalists
Installation efforts
• Solar panels and other solar products are more expensive as compared to the
conventional products.
• It is difficult to switch electricity tariffs, which would prevent people from adopting it.
• Too many forms to fill and people are unaware of the process and the subsidies being
provided by the government.
The people who have installed the solar panels at their homes were majorly due to social
factors, Government’s efforts and environmental concern.
• Friends, relatives and people in the social circle are adopting solar products.
• People are often willing to spend much higher prices to protect the environment.
25%
75%
Yes No
Factors that prevent people from adopting Solar on a 5 point likert scale
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Factors that prevent people from adopting Solar on a 5 point likert scale
This chart represents the average of the ratings provided by the respondents. As seen by the
chart people are not impacted by the cost of maintenance, aesthetics of the products or how
they reduce the aesthetics of their house or the difficulty of installation of the panels. Factors
like Installation by people in the social circle positively impacts them.
These reasons were analysed by multilinear regression on the four categories of reasons. These
categories were cost and maintenance of the solar panel, Social influence factors, Difficulty
and Government related factors and Environment factors, with the reasons mentioned above.
Furthermore, the results of multilinear regression of the responses showed that when we see
social factors, reasons like solar panels should be presentable or adding aesthetic value to the
house were negatively correlated to installation of panel while installation of solar panels by
friends, relative and other people in the social circle positively impacted the installation.
Government subsidies played a positive role in the adoption of the solar panels while some
factors like intense paperwork and lack of knowledge of the process, difficulty to switch
electricity tariffs and the intense paperwork required to get the solar panel prevented people
from adoption.
We have seen a positive response in the environmental factors, people feel more responsible
and feel that they contribute to the environment by installing solar panels or switching to the
more non-conventional and environment friendly ways. However, people are not willing to pay
the premium price that the solar panel installation requires and so some external help or
government subsidies help in this regard.
Conclusion
The people are aware of the harm that we cause to the environment and feel that solar and other
environmentally friendly energy sources need to be adopted and the new generation is more
aware of the problem as shown by the demographics of the result. But at the same time people
are not willing to pay the price that installation of solar panels requires. So, the subsidies
provided by the government plays an important role. Also, people are not aware of the existing
subsidy schemes being provided by the government so the government need to spread
awareness regarding the same.
References
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