A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities
University of the Witwatersrand
In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Masters of Arts in Organisational Psychology
2016 / Recent environmental awareness has led to an expanding interest surrounding
environmental consciousness and a greater social shift world over towards energy
efficiency and the sustainability of technologies and resources. Consequently, there
has been the development of sustainable technologies within the automobile industry
including that of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). With the development of these
technologies, it becomes necessary to investigate the factors that underpin the use and
adoption of them within our society, so as to ensure their greater diffusion, use and
adoption. In this light, this study aimed to investigate the factors that function in
predicting the Intention to Adopt the sustainable technology of HEVs. This has been
investigated in accordance with the constructs of the Unified Theory of Acceptance
and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. This model comprises the constructs of:
Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence and Facilitating
Conditions. This study also intended to examine these constructs and determine
whether they are moderated by the constructs of Pro-Environmental Behaviour and
Dispositional Resistance to Change in predicting the Intention to Adopt HEVs. The
sample for this study was comprised of 133 final year Law students from the
University of the Witwatersrand. The adapted UTAUT Scale, the adapted
Dispositional Resistance to Change Scale and the Pro-Environmental Scale were
utilised as the measures within this study. Several subscales of the UTAUT Scale as
well as the Pro-Environmental Behaviour (PEB) Scale had low Internal Consistency
Reliabilities within both the Pilot and Main study. However, the researcher chose to
run the analyses taking this into consideration. Several subscales of the UTAUT Scale
as well as the Dispositional Resistance to Change (DRC) Scale had acceptable levels
of Internal Consistency Reliabilities for use in conducting analyses. Multiple
regression equations and moderated multiple regression equations were run in order to
investigate the effects of these constructs in predicting the Intention to Adopt HEVs.
The results drawn from this study illustrated that there was a positive, significant
effect of two questions concerning lifestyle factors and a reduced taxed levy of the
construct Facilitating Conditions on Intention to Adopt HEVs. The results also
showed that the constructs of PEB and DRC had no direct moderating influence on
Intention to Adopt HEVs. / MT2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/21808 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Preston, Kelli-Paige |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (91 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf |
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