The deviation between the behavior and willingness of rural residents to use clean energy and its influencing factors in China

Rural residents who really accept and adopt clean energy make significant sense for long-term sustainability. The purpose of this study was to resolve the limitations of existing studies that only discuss whether there is a deviation between behavior and willingness, and deeply measures the deviation level between behavior and willingness to use clean energy for heating, cooking, and producing hot water, and to identify the factors influencing contrasting levels of deviation for different energy-consumption activities. A survey of 854 rural residents from 62 villages was conducted in the Loess Plateau region of China, and the multinomial logit model was used to investigate the influencing factors. The results showed that the proportion of high-level deviation for heating and low-level deviation for cooking was the highest. Policy cognition and usefulness perception had significant negative impacts on the deviation for heating, cooking, and producing hot water. Herd mentality had a significant positive impact on low-level deviation in hot water production. Males were more likely to have a high-level deviation for cooking. The results of this study provide a basis for scientific policy formulation and guide the transition from the willingness to the actual clean energy adoption behavior of rural residents.