Barriers to use of artificial intelligence on energy conservation in government buildings: awareness as a moderating function of technology acceptance

Abstract

Government Buildings enable occupation to thousands of inhabitants, including customers and the management. In these places, everybody uses free energy since nobody feels the need for conservation as there is no impact to their pocket at the end of the month. According to the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) of Sri Lanka sources, the electricity cost of these places exceeds 7.5Billion Rs. It is approximately equivalent to 3% of the annual turnover of CEB. Because of this free energy, nobody is interested in conserving it even though there is a severe energy shortage. Therefore, there is an empirical novelty in investigating this abandoned resource towards conserving energy with artificial intelligence (AI) devices. The study identified five major factors that disturb the use of devices with artificial intelligence. The same instrument develops as the policy directive on the conservation of energy in government buildings.