Social psychological predictors of adoption intention for solar water heaters in rural China

As solar water heater (SWH) technology becomes more economical, fully developed, and popular, the Chinese government has endeavored to promote rural residents’ adoption of SWHs. We applied the technology acceptance model and the theory of planned behavior to investigate how the social psychological factors of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, policy support, and economic cost affected the intention to adopt SWHs among a sample of 427 rural residents living in Jiangxi Province, China. The results indicated that subjective norm and perceived behavioral control had positive impacts on the intention to adopt SWHs. In addition, both perceived usefulness and policy support significantly predicted adoption intention, whereas economic cost had a negative impact on adoption intention. Implications of the results are discussed.