Essays on users' perspectives toward renewable energy technologies in Korea

Abstract

This dissertation aims to addressing the following issues: to explain a structural mechanism and implications how users accept renewable energy technologies and what their motivations affect their acceptance patterns by employing the technology acceptance model (TAM). Because the TAM was widely used in information and communication technology (ICT) industry and technologies in ICT industry have been used as a background industry of other industries including transportation and, environment and energy industries, the TAM was employed to users' perspectives toward renewable energy technologies and products. This dissertation is organized as follows: Essay 1 attempts to examine users' acceptance of general renewable energy technologies. In addition, in order to see the negative effects of substitutional energy technologies on users' perspectives toward renewable energy technologies, Essay 1 tracks the public perceptions of renewable energy technologies before and after Fukushima accident, which was one of the biggest accidents in nuclear industry. As an example of renewable energy and transportation sector in users' perspectives, Essay 2 introduces users' acceptance of electric vehicles. Essay 3 aims to investigate users' perceptions of electric-powered taxis, which are representative of transportation services conducted by alternative vehicles, and renewable energy technologies. The Fukushima accident has influenced public attitudes toward energy sources and technologies, including not only nuclear energy, but also other energy sources. Therefore, it is worth investigating how the accident influenced public perceptions of renewable energy and its technologies, between the time before the accident and after the accident. Essay 1 aims to explore the effects of the Fukushima accident on the public perceptions of renewable energy technologies in South Korea, the closest nation to Japan. Essay 1 found that there were notable differences of public perceptions, including public attitudes, perceived benefits, trust, intention to use, knowledge and risks between before and after the earthquake. In addition, the perceived cost of renewable energy technologies was the primary determinant of the intention to use the technologies before the accident, whereas public attitudes toward the technologies became the main antecedents of the intention after the accident. After the accident, we found that there is a multi-dimensional matrix of perceived trust-benefits (with risks)-attitude-intention to use, in explaining the public acceptance of renewable energy technologies. Moreover, we found significant roles of the perceived trust, benefits and risks in the research model. Based on the empirical findings, both implications and suggestions are presented. Our society is increasingly interested in environmental issues, including transportation sector pollutants such as greenhouse gasses and industrial waste. Therefore, interest in alternative transportation types has been rapidly increasing. One promising type of transportation developed by renewable energy technologies is electric vehicles. However, the diffusion of these vehicles has been too slow for successful commercialization, and they make limited contributions toward reducing pollutants. Therefore, Essay 2 explores potential factors of drivers' intentions to use electric vehicles and proposes an integrated adoption model. The results of a structural equation modelling analysis indicate that drivers' intentions are predicted by one negative factor (cost) and three positive factors (satisfaction, usefulness, and attitude). The academic and industrial implications of these findings are discussed. With rapidly increasing interest in several significant environmental and transportation issues, namely, greenhouse gas emissions, there have been several attempts to transition the current transportation systems and vehicles to more environment-friendly vehicles. Following this trend, Essay 3 aims to investigate drivers' motivations for adopting electric-powered taxis in two representative nations, South Korea and the U.S. Essay 3 conducted a main survey and collected data from professional taxi-drivers in the U.S. and South Korea to explore the differences between the two nations. In addition, an integrated adoption model for electric-powered taxis was proposed and a structural equation modelling method was employed to test the model. The results indicated that usefulness, services and system quality, and trust were positive factors that could predict driver acceptance of electric-powered taxis, while perceived risks and cost showed negative effects on acceptance. In addition, the driver acceptance patterns of two nations are significantly different. The results also illustrated that there are different sets of circumstances with various implications for practice and academia. Based on the findings, we examine its implications and limitations, as well as the potential for future studies. When comparing to the structural acceptance patterns in three essays, several points can be explored. First, perceived risks were extracted in the interview session with a service provider group and confirmed as one of the significant factors of using electric-powered taxis, whereas the risks were not extracted in the interview with an end user group. This means that perceived risks were gradually magnified when the driving experience was accumulated, even though the risks were not considered as an important factor in early days. Second, perceived cost hindered the intention to use both general renewable energy technologies and products. It means that more comprehensive supporting plans should be considered in diffusing the technologies and products. Third, public attitudes were investigated as one of the core motivations of general renewable energy technologies and products. It means that the governments and industry should pay attention to incubate generally positive moods on renewable energy technologies and products rather than delivering more detailed knowledge of the technologies and products to the public. Fourth, public attitude formed by social, utilitarian and risks was roughly considered as the significant motivations in using general renewable energy technologies and using the products for business, the attitude formed by utilitarian and hedonic factors was considered as the core factors in end-users' intention to employ. Moreover, economics was one of the important factors in determining the intention. It means that industry and governments should have different supporting plans in diffusing the technologies and products for end-users.