Assessing Consumers’ Behavioral Intentions to Adopt Green Technologies: A Combined Research Framework

The adoption of green technologies, i.e., technologies affecting energy usage in residential buildings is a highly debated research issue among researchers in environmental behavior. During last decades, environmental management literature focused on how governments or companies could develop strategies aimed at fostering the adoption of these measures in order to effectively reduce the overall energy consumption. This paper develops and applies a framework that combines the Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior and the analysis of perceived image’ to examine consumers’ intention to adopt green technologies. First, we identified the impact of Ajzen’s determinants (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) on consumers’ intention to adopt these technologies. Then, we determined the perceived image of green technologies by identifying their attributes and, in turn, their latent dimensions. Finally, we measured the impact of green technologies’ latent dimensions on Ajzen’s determinants and behavioral intentions. Results showed that the advantages/disadvantages related to green technologies were the psychological determinants that influenced to a greater extent the intention to use them. Moreover, the perception of such technologies as innovative, healthy and energy-independent was the main determinants of the intention to adopt them in residential buildings. Theoretical and managerial implications for marketers and policymakers were also discussed.