Public Readiness to Adopt Solar Energy – Responses of Some Finnish Citizens

Abstract

Although most of the Finns are positive toward solar energy, they have long been stumbled to adopt and hesitated to rely on it due to its traditional weak images and mostly unfavourable weather conditions. However, in solar energy, Finland is already credited to award-winning innovation, demonstration projects, business models, and so on. Additionally, decreased price and the availability of some incentives have got the public attraction. In such contexts, the prospects of solar energy in the country in terms of public readiness to invest and adopt, have induced this study to undertake. Results driven by this qualitative study through some semi-structured interviews have shown a trend of escalating social acceptance rate of solar energy among Finns. However, they were seemed to be still entangled with some misconceptions, lack of well-exposed information, good numbers of visible success stories, etc. This study has also included some recommendations and future research directions.