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 under-researched 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.