Climate change issues have become significant challenges in China's sustainable growth due to the excessive use of fossil fuels. Though, the Chinese government has successfully utilized solar energy resources to overcome these issues. However, studies focusing on assessing consumers' willingness to utilize solar energy are scarce in the country. Th. ••Cost of solar energy has a negative effect on consumers' willingness to utilize solar energy.••Perception about self-effectiveness and environmental concern have positive effects.••Awareness of solar energy and belief of solar energy benefits also have positive effects.••Perception about neighbors' participation is found to has an insignificant effect.Solar energyConsumersTheory of planned behaviorStructural equation modelingASE Awareness of solar energyPES Perception about self-effectivenessBSB Belief of solar energy benefitsCSE Cost of solar energyECO Environmental concernPEN Massive reliance on conventional fuels (coal, oil, ad gas) not only has a burden on the national economy but also directs various environmental problems such as global warming, carbon emissions, and unpredictable weather conditions (Kavari et al., 2019). The excessive use of conventional fuels results in the depletion of natural resources (Mukeshimana et al., 2020; Irfan et al., 2020e; Jabeen et al., 2020). Therefore, a new energy structure needs to be established (Elavarasan et al., 2020a). Alternate energy sources (wind, solar, and biomass) would be used in this new energy structure, which on the one hand, can reduce the cost of oil imports and, on the other hand, mitigate climate problems (Rezaee et al., 2019).Solar energy is regarded as a promising way to mitigate climate change and resolve pollution issues (Creutzig et al., 2017; Irfan et al., 2019a). Several countries have taken steps to uplift solar energy's share in their energy portfolio (Valdés and Leon, 2019). Solar power schemes are believed to enrich the life quality of residents in different ways. For instance, solar energy can minimize carbon emissions (Sweerts et al., 2019), generates new job opportunities for local citizens that directly benefit the national economy, offers cheap energy (Irfan et al., 2019b), and it is projected that it would stabilize the prices of electricity in the future (Kabir et al., 2018).
