Investigating the Profile of Potential New Energy Innovators: An Example from UNIDO-ICHET Website Users

The innovators play vital roles in promoting the acceptance of new technology. This is a poll for investigating the profile of potential new energy innovators. The researchers tried to describe the new energy potential innovators' profile via the variables of demographics, information sources, opinions regarding hydrogen energy safety, familiarity about new energy media issues, innovativeness, opinion leadership, their usage of the UNIDO-ICHET website and opinions regarding new energy policy. The researchers sent out e-mails and posted invitations on related forums to invite the potential interviewees to participate in this online poll. The questionnaire of this poll for new energy potential innovators was designed in May 2005, and this survey was formally conducted between 11 August 2005 and 11 January 2006. The research method is an online survey and a voluntary sample. This survey successfully collected 1126 new energy innovators' information. The data was analyzed using SPSS statistics software. The profile of the potential new energy innovators tend to be male, actively involved in energy related activities, highly dependent on the Internet to get or produce information related to new energy issues, and have a very positive perception about hydrogen energy (HE), except they tend to agree HE is expensive