Identifying consumer psychological empowerment compensation mechanisms in the context of photovoltaics: A tetraclass model approach

Solar photovoltaics (PV) literature has strived to understand predictors and model the behavior of consumers regarding PV adoption or rejection. However, research paid relatively limited attention to what happens regarding consumers' satisfaction after installation of PVs, while PV deployment has been hit by a significant slowdown in EU. Still, PV adoption studies have outlined many benefits of residential PV use that can be related to individuals' psychological empowerment facets, an antecedent of satisfaction. This multidimensional construct encompasses the beliefs individuals have regarding the meaning, their competence, autonomy, and the outcomes that their activities have on themselves and their community. In the last decade, scholars have also started to investigate the dark side of incentive policies on consumer behavior, but no investigated yet the impact of policies on consumer self-determination, a facet of psychological empowerment. Drawing on psychological empowerment theory, the purpose of this article is to explore and compare the structure of empowerment facets related to the use of PV when self-determination is restricted, so as to identify empowerment compensation mechanisms to restore satisfaction. For that purpose, we applied the tetraclass model approach, which establishes distinctive types of contribution to satisfaction in a four-point typology. Using a sample of 500 PV owners in France and Germany, we compared how PV use psychological empowerment manifestations fit into this typology when individuals perceive different levels of self-determination (SD) to use the technology, so as to compare the structure of psychological empowerment contribution to satisfaction when SD is eroded. We found that the impact manifestations associated to PV use exhibit higher levels of importance when SD is threatened by local policies or social pressure, so as to restore individuals' satisfaction. A deeper understanding of households psychological empowerment compensation mechanisms might reduce the deceleration in PV diffusion in European countries.