Consumer Acceptance Analysis of the Home Energy Management System

The purpose of this paper is to study consumer acceptance of the Home Energy Management System, which is the next generation electronic management system that the Korean government plans to implement in households. The Home Energy Management System is a critical device in maximizing the efficiency of electric energy consumption for each household by using a smart grid. Because it can visualize real-time price information on the electricity, households can easily monitor and control the amount of electricity consumption. With this feature, the Home Energy Management System can contribute to consumers’ total energy savings. This is a major reason why the Korean government wishes to implement it nationwide. Since the Home Energy Management System is a product that applies new technology that has not yet been directly encountered by consumers, there may be a difference in the level of public perception of the Home Energy Management System. Therefore, the impact of consumers’ awareness of the Home Energy Management System on their intention to use is important. To do this, the Technology Acceptance Model is utilized in this study. Traditional research on the Technology Acceptance Model includes awareness of usefulness and ease of use as well as intention to use. In contrast, in this research, an extended Technology Acceptance Model with four additional factors—economic benefit, social contribution, environmental responsibility, and innovativeness—that may affect the consumer’s awareness of usefulness and ease of use, is proposed. To collect the data, the survey was conducted with 287 respondents. As a result, the proposed model proved to be suitable in explaining the intention to use with a 70.3% explanation power. It is found that economic benefit (0.231) and innovativeness (0.259) impact on usefulness of the Home Energy Management System. Moreover, usefulness (0.551) has a bigger effect on intention to use than ease of use (0.338) does. Based on this, it is desirable for the Korean government to pursue a public relations strategy that emphasizes the economic benefits, social contributions, and environmental responsibility that will be gained when introducing the Home Energy Management System. It is effective to focus on consumers who are inclined to accept innovation. In addition, more effective results can be obtained by referring to the usefulness of the Home Energy Management System rather than referring to ease of use.