Understanding the Rural Households’ Renewable Energy Consumption: From Measuring to Incentivizing

Rural decarbonizing is considered a crucial part of the broader decarbonization. However, there is few research measure the rural households' renewable energy consumption (REC) intention systematically. To fill the gap, taking the China rural region as instance, this paper designs and validates a scale measuring the intention of households' REC by the framework of the extended planning behavior theory (E-TPB). Based on the scale, further surveys were respectively implemented in 2019 and 2023, providing the sampling data for examining the impact of decarbonizing policies from the perspective of quasi-natural experiment. The difference-in-difference (DID) method, combined with propensity score matching (PSM), are applied to verify the policies’ impact on the intention factors, which illustrate the driven-path of REC intention forming. The findings suggest that implementing decarbonizing policies significantly promotes rural households' REC. Additionally, factors such as "subjective norms", "moral norms", income, and education positively influence the adoption of REC in rural households. However, "perceived behavioral control" has an inhibitory effect on REC. By measuring rural households' REC intention, the acceptance and effectiveness of existing decarbonizing policies can be assessed, providing a basis for further adjustment.