Individuals' Willingness to Become a Prosumer of Green Energy: An Explorative Study and Research Agenda

Increasing environmental awareness, climate concerns, and the recent global crisis are creating the need for energy sustainability, and environmental concerns among individuals are growing. Their involvement in the energy transition, through promoting cleaner lifestyles, is becoming more and more relevant, both from an economic and an environmental perspective. Since the availability of technologies and incentivizing policies, households can become energy prosumers and our purpose is to identify drivers of individual willingness to become an energy prosumer. An explorative study based on a literature review and a qualitative research is presented. The findings of qualitative analysis, based on the results gathered through in-depth interviews, suggest that the predisposition to become a prosumer depends on personal preferences, expected results, social and contextual factors, which include health, economic and diplomatic crises.