Impact of privacy concerns on consumers' acceptance of smart metering in the Netherlands

A number of initiatives are taking place in the European Union and US to roll out the smart metering system, as part of the smart grids in the energy sector. The motivation behind the system, among others, is to meet requirements from the Kyoto protocol and EU Energy Efficiency Directives. Among the obstacles impeding the system roll out is consumers' information security and privacy concerns. In this paper, privacy concerns are presented as social vulnerability and how it negatively impacts the system. The paper concludes with the findings of a predictive logistic regression model that was used to analyze a survey among residential electricity consumers in The Netherlands, which revealed consumers' tendencies to rejecting or accepting the system.