Towards Sustainable Consumption: Determinants of Green Energy Adoption Among Residential Customers in Australia

Due to Australia’s massive usage of fossil fuels, climate change concerns have become serious challenges to the country’s sustainable development. Despite the fact that Australia has effectively employed green energy technology to address these problems, there is a paucity of research examining consumers’ intention and buying behaviour to adopt green energy among the residential customers in Australia. This study intends to fill this gap in the literature by studying consumers’ purchase intention and behaviour for green energy in Australia for household purposes. A conceptual framework of green energy purchase and behaviour (i.e., GPIB) is proposed from Australian standpoint and uses survey data to better understand Australian households’ psychological factors, including attitude, norms and intention which drive green energy buying behaviours, to give more insights to policymakers in the renewable energy sector. Though the factors (proposed in a new framework of GPIB), such as attitude, subjective norm, personal norm and perceived behavioural control (PBC) of green energy, which could influence consumers’ intention and behaviour are discussed to some extent in previous literature with the integration of many behavioural theories (e.g., TRA, TPB), researchers used these factors in different time and regions with different finding. This research aims to increase knowledge in this area by employing a socio-psychological model - to predict GPI and GEB in Australian perspective.