Relationship of consumption pattern on Malaysian consumer toward renewable energy

Over the past century, conventional energy contributes to the environmental issue. The drastically increase of using renewable energy worldwide because consumers nowadays realized that conventional energy was almost dry up and cause pollution to the environment. The promoting of renewable energy as sustainable energy source does not work indeed when consumer is concerned about environmental issues. Apart from the price instability, the consumption of renewable energy among residents still needs to be explored despite of consumer’s awareness about environmental issues. This has driven scientists to look for renewable energy that with less pollution is more user-friendly. In Malaysia’s context, it launched Feed-in Tariff (FiT), Net Energy Metering (NEM) schemes and most recently on Large Scale Solar (LSS) program to encourage renewable energy to the public as various energy sources to reduce carbon emissions and support the country's energy demand by 2020. This study aims to investigate the relationship between consumer’s concern, knowledge, acceptance, attitude, and belief towards willingness to pay more for renewable energy among bill payers in Peninsular Malaysia. By using the theory of reasoned action as the theoretical underpinning theory, the questionnaire survey was distributed to the bill payers throughout Klang Valley, Malaysia. Based on the 179 responses, this study suggests consumer’s concern, knowledge, belief, and acceptance towards renewable energy are positively related to paying a premium for renewable energy. To test the five research hypotheses, Partial Least Square was employed. This study results suggest that the energy consumption pattern affects the ability of customers to pay more toward renewable energy. This will be very beneficial to the policymakers, in line with the Eleventh Malaysian plan in pursuing the green technology growth.
Keywords: consumer acceptance, consumer attitude, consumer belief, consumer concern, consumer knowledge, Feed-in Tariff (FiT), Large Scale Solar (LSS), Net Energy Metering (NEM), renewable energy, theory of reasoned action (TRA), willingness to pay.