Governance of energy transition in Iran: Investigating public acceptance and willingness to use renewable energy sources through socio-psychological model

Masoud Yazdanpanah, Nadejda Komendantova and Roshanak Shafiei Ardestani

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, vol. 45, issue C, 565-573

Abstract: Despite extensive renewable energy sources (RES) potentials in Iran, their share in current energy mix remains minor comparatively to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Government strategies and targets for deployment of RES in Iran exist. Also several scientific works were written on technical and economic feasibility of such solution. However, the question about public acceptance in Iran of energy transition based on deployment of RES remains open. It this research we assume that socio-psychological factors might play a significant role in public acceptance to use RES. We base our research on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which we expand to investigate the question of willingness to use and public acceptance of RES. As one of the methods of analysis, we conducted a survey (N=260) among Iranian students in the universities of the city of Esfahan, in the center of Iran. We assume that these stakeholders will play a key role in deployment of RES in the future, they will be active as energy project managers, as they are currently studying engineering disciplines, and might contribute to the energy transition in Iran. We analyzed empirical data from the survey with the help of structural equation modeling. Our results show that moral norms, attitudes and perceived behavioral control are significant factors influencing willingness to use and public acceptance of RES, while subjective norms and self-identity do not play a significant role.

Keywords: Renewable energies; Social acceptance; Theory of planned behavior and Iran (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032115000908
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:45:y:2015:i:c:p:565-573

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.02.002

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().