Understanding Iranian Rural People’s Intention to Use Renewable Energy Technologies: Pro-Self or Pro-Social Orientations?

The increasing need for energy resources and the threat of shortage of available fossil fuels in the future along with the adverse environmental issues arising from consumption of these fuels, especially climate change, have led countries to pursue sustainable and eco-friendly modes of producing energy. Meanwhile, in recent years, many researchers have considered renewable energies and their related technologies. However, the evidence indicates that social or public acceptance of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) is low and people, especially in rural areas of developing countries, are less likely to adopt and use such technologies. Accordingly, the current study was undertaken to investigate the factors influencing Iranian villagers’ intention to use RETs through two socio-psychological models with pro-self and pro-social motivations and to integrate them into one comprehensive theoretical framework. A questionnaire survey was conducted for 393 villagers in Zanjan County in northwestern Iran. The study results disclosed that personal norm, attitude, social norm, and perceived behavioral control had significant positive impacts on the intention to use RETs. Most importantly, the findings confirmed the effectiveness of the original models of Norm Activation Model (NAM) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in explaining the villagers’ intention. However, the utility and applicability of an integrative model of TPB-NAM were superior to the original models. Additionally, the original NAM contributed considerably more to the integrative model than the original TPB. Collectively, the pro-social orientations outweighed the pro-self motives in the case of explaining the behavioral intention regarding the use of RETs among Iranian villagers. Overall, this study’s findings contribute to the theory and practice around sustainable energy development in Iran and other developing countries.