Citizens and Energy Transition: Understanding the Role of Perceived Barriers and Information Sources

By investing in renewable energy sources (RES), citizens can participate actively in energy transition. The problem, however, is that citizen investment decisions are highly complex, while most strategies for capital mobilization rely on generic incentives or broad campaigns. To provide a new approach to mobilizing citizen capital, this study considers perceived barriers, as it is important to address aspects that disincline citizens from investing, and their preferred information sources, because attitudes are shaped and actions are empowered or disempowered through these channels. Drawing on a representative sample of Greek citizens, we used k-means clustering to segment citizens; the first cluster was inhibited to invest by loaning conditions, highlighting the need for banks to offer better terms for loans, while the second cluster was inhibited by a wide array of technical, economic, and systemic concerns requiring different stakeholders to address the barriers underlying these concerns. The third cluster was inhibited by barriers related to the technology of renewables and the availability of experts for installing and maintaining the systems, indicating the need to address such. Results also showed that several information sources can have a negative effect, suggesting that there should be policy intervention to enhance the accuracy of information.