Understanding people's pro-environmental behavioral intention towards green energy – a mitigation strategy in the fight against climate change

Climate change can be treated as a "wicked" problem, fundamentally linked to energy consumption; therefore, a radical change in values and behaviors towards a paradigm of lower consumption is necessary. The study stands in the perspective of Australian standpoint, regards the green energy consumption intention (GCI) in response to the climate change as proenvironmental behaviors, and verifies an innovative pro-environmental behavioral intention model. Our study evaluates the psychological factors leading to the formation of a theoretical model based on Environmental Theory of Planned Behavior (ETPB, Ajzen, 1991; Mancha & Yoder, 2015) aimed at predicting people's intentions to engage in green energy consumption that can help to mitigate climate change problems in Australia. The study expands the theory and examine the effects of environmental sustainability awareness, social responsibility and moral norm on GCI that encourages the green energy initiatives to mitigate climate change problem. Applying the refined ETPB on a sample of 385 households in Australia, and using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), the study finds that moral norm ranks high in merit followed by perceived consumer effectiveness in predicting people's intention to engage in green energy consumption action against the climate change in Australia. Our findings add to previous work on psychological predictors and provide a new theoretical perspective to guide the energy policy and explain sustainable behavioral intent towards green energy adoption against the climate change.