Sustainable development and consumption: The role of trust for switching towards green energy

This paper develops a model that helps to explain the switching behaviour of private consumers towards green electricity suppliers. It is built upon neo-institutional and neo-behavioural theories, including a series of antecedents of trust as reputation, perceived environmental impact, the propensity to trust and perceived risk. This model is applied through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to a sample of 787 German electricity consumers. Results demonstrate that trust has a direct influence on switching behaviour towards a green electricity supplier. Furthermore, reputation, perceived environmental impact, propensity to trust and perceived risk influence the switching behaviour of electricity suppliers through trust as mediating variable. It draws a co-habitation of neo-institutional and neo-behavioural theories in the construction of trust and the necessity to work on reducing consumers uncertainties.