Public acceptance of solar energy: The case of Peninsular Malaysia

Social acceptability is a determinant factor in failure or success of the government decisions about which electricity generation sources will satisfy the growing demand for energy. Drawing from research interviews and the academic literature, this paper explores the factors influencing the social acceptance of solar energy in Peninsular Malaysia, and conceptualizes the conditions that promote investor confidence. This paper adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the social acceptance of solar energy technologies from user's perspective. In this research door to door data was collected from 400 respondents, and analysed by the software SPSS 16. Interestingly, the survey results show that there is still a huge lack of awareness and proper knowledge on solar energy in many levels of society. This study finds out that high cost of the solar panels is dragging consumers to use electricity generated by fuels. This also provides useful references for policy makers to further promote the utilization of solar energy in Malaysia.