THE EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN ON RENEWABLE ENERGY AWARENESS, PERCEIVED BENEFIT AND INTENTION TO USE

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Energy use-related environmental and social concerns and problems have led to the development of renewable (RE) energy types such as wind, solar, hydraulic, and geothermal energy. Increasing environmental concerns, as well as public awareness and positive attitudes towards sustainable energy types, have played an important role in this development.  The present study investigated the effects of the mentioned environmental concerns on the attitudes towards renewable energy and renewable energy usage intention with a proposed structural model. In the first part of the proposed model, the effect of environmental concerns on the awareness and perceived benefits of RE, and in the second part, the effect of awareness and perceived benefits of RE on the RE usage intention was examined. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test the model.  Regarding the fitness of the model, the chi-square value was calculated as 141.77, and the (χ2/df) value as 2.36. Analysis results demonstrated that one unit increase in environmental concerns would increase awareness of RE by 0.63 and perceived benefits by 0.51 unit. It was also found that awareness of RE would increase the perceived benefits of RE and that especially the increase in awareness positively would affect RE usage intention.