Household support to adopt preventive innovations to mitigate climate change: A case of Finnish apartment buildings

Among the various practices required to achieve sustainability objectives and prevent climate change consequences, there are energy efficiency, behavioral changes, and use of renewables. Innovations that seek to deter climate change can be considered preventive innovations. Preventive innovations are those that individuals adopt to reduce the probability of unwanted future events for which, innovations that seek to reduce or mitigate unwanted environmental events can be considered preventive. However, ‘clean’ technologies and practices are seldom described as preventive. In this study we explored factors that support the adoption of products and services of prevention in relation to environmental protection. The context of our study was within Finnish apartment buildings, where we identified factors that lead to the support of communal housing projects to improve environmental friendliness through the adoption of preventive innovations. In this case, we considered the investments of housing companies to serve various underlying goals of prevention in relation to environmental protection. The dependent variable was “In general, I am in favor of housing association projects (geothermal, air heating, solar panels, heat recovery, etc.) to improve environmental friendliness” whereas independent variables were based on background factors, willingness to sacrifice for the environment, and environmental assets. We ran a statistical analysis with our survey responses, and it yielded three linear regression models out of which one (Model 3) was selected as the best fit. With the chosen model we identified three significant variables that were associated with the support of housing associating projects that seek to improve environmental friendliness. Our findings are in line with previous studies on pro-environmental behavior, confirming that gender, education, and environmental assets are factors that lead to pro-environmental behavior and behavioral intentions. This study provides a path towards analyzing the preventive innovation construct as well as identifying factors that lead to adoption.