Socioeconomic evaluation of green energy investments

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore citizens’ willingness to invest in photovoltaics. Design/methodology/approach To meet the aim of the research, a questionnaire survey was conducted in the island of Evia in Greece using the method of random stratified sampling. A total of 366 responses were analyzed using both descriptive and inductive statistics methods, such as principal components analysis, K-means cluster analysis, discriminant analysis and binary logistic regression. Findings The research results indicate that 73per cent of the respondents would invest in renewable energy sources, whereas 55per cent of them would specifically invest in photovoltaics. Regarding their views on photovoltaics, three components were extracted; photovoltaics positive effects, facilitations for investments in photovoltaics and photovoltaics’ performance. Area of residence, annual income and the above-mentioned three components of views on photovoltaics were found to be statistically significant for the dichotomous variable of willingness to invest in photovoltaics. Among the examined variables, photovoltaics performance found to contribute the most in increasing respondents’ willingness to invest in photovoltaics. Originality/value The study filled the literature gap concerning citizens’ willingness to invest in photovoltaics in Greece. Furthermore, the research results made feasible to understand the factors that can lead in an investment decision for photovoltaics.

Environmental Innovation, Open Innovation Dynamics and Competitive Advantage of Medium and Large-Sized Firms

“…Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin's measure of sampling adequacy is equal to 0.86 while Bartlett's test of sphericity (sig. = 0.000) rejects the null hypothesis of an identity matrix; these results confirm that the items used are related and suitable for PCA [5,92]. Furthermore, the extracted components' Cronbach's alpha values show high internal consistency as they are greater than the lowest acceptable value, which is about 0.7 [93].…”

“…As far as environmental product innovation is concerned, firms seem to take seriously into consideration the need for toxic substances usage reduction as it is the most implemented practice. On the contrary, in contrast to the country's energy mix [5,123], the examined firms use energy from renewable sources at a moderate level. Last, the environmental product innovation practice, which is found to be the least implemented is that of environmental events sponsorship.…”

“…PCA and EFA can produce similar results; however, PCA provides information such as individual respondents' scores on the components and requires fewer resources than EFA [90]. In the PCA, Kaizer's varimax rotation method is used in order to obtain the best fitting results [5]. The PCA resulted in three components.…”

“…Thus, firms worldwide face constant pressures to improve their interaction with the natural environment and take actions to protect it. Such pressures come from governmental organizations through regulations and public policies, from non-governmental organizations through their actions and from consumers through their needs, as there is strong evidence that new consumers' generations are environmentally sensitive [3][4][5].…”

Prediction of Future State Based on Up-To-Date Information of Green Development Using Algorithm of Deep Neural Network

“…[7]. Modern countries with a big part of industries use alternative energy, namely, in the USA, solar energy is considered the main source of power consumption in California, and 24% of power resources in Germany use wind turbine generators to supply the people [8]. Even the petroleum countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar try to use green energy in different fields and avoid exhausting oil energy.…”