Who will adapt faster: insights from studying the underlying impact of climate change perception on people's willingness to adopt household PV-BES system

By regarding household photovoltaic and battery storage hybrid energy systems (PV-BES) as a typical climate change adaptive product, this study analyzes the impacts of people's climate change and adaptive capacity perception, including climate change perception (CCP), self-coping ability (ABT), social connectedness with friends (SCF) and government trust (GVT), on their willingness to adopt (WTA) PV-BES. The classical Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model was extended to establish an explanatory framework. Our structural equation modeling results show that people who have higher SCF tend to take climate change adaptative action faster because they are usually more innovative or feel the action is more controllable. The prior experience of electricity shortages caused by climate change disasters (EESCCD) alters the way people think when they evaluate adaptive behaviors. Specifically, people with EESCCD are more likely to take adaptive actions because of higher CCPs, and invest more mental efforts to evaluate the behavior from practical perspectives, ultimately making decision more rationally.