Does Bene ciaries’ Satisfaction Enhance Their Trust in State Grid for Solar PV Adoption? – An Evidence From PAPs in Rural China

Liping Ding China University of Geosciences School of Economics and Management Yin Shi (  s19970523y@163.com ) China University of Geosciences School of Economics and Management https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3368-0316 Qiyao Dai China University of Geosciences School of Economics and Management Zumeng Zhang China University of Geosciences School of Economics and Management Jiaxin Li China University of Geosciences School of Economics and Management Ling Zhou China University of Geosciences School of Foreign Languages

SEM or path analysis is mostly used in satisfaction studies to explore the causal relationship among variables [11,77]. In the eld of renewable energy, the important factors determining consumers' satisfaction included the image of service provider, consumer expectation, and perceived quality, etc. [51].
Speci cally, in the solar PV research, the bene ts of the solar household system (SHS) lifestyle and the quality of its equipment played a key role in improving users' satisfaction with SHS in rural Bangladesh from a quantitative perspective [34,46]. At the same time, public's satisfaction played a positive role in using solar technology [33]. Information and educational campaigns about clean energy technologies might have a positive impact on home owners' satisfaction, leading to positive word-of-mouth recommendation and other impact [46]. In a survey of distributed solar technology adoption in rural India, it was found that the use of home solar technology is closely related to the subjective satisfaction of home lighting [2]. In addition, scholars also analyzed other factors affecting satisfaction, such as public trust [29], purchase intention [23], and government image [10].

Satisfaction and trust
Trust is regarded as a critical feature and a central mechanism in business transactions [64]. In the expansion of modern coal-red power plant projects and power grid projects, trust exerted a signi cant in uence on public support attitudes [41,48]. For the environmental sustainable development, companies need to invest resources to increase customers' green perceived value, thereby enhancing green trust and customers' green loyalty [12]. Previous literatures have shown there is a direct and indirect correlation between satisfaction and trust. For the former, some scholars found that the satisfaction of neighborhood facilities was an important predictor of social trust [39]. Otherwise, the trust in local government also had a signi cant positive impact on urban residents' environmental public service satisfaction, while the trust in central government had no signi cant impact [70]. Thus, it was necessary to improve residents' trust in local governments with communication and cooperation. For the latter, trust played a certain intermediary or mediation role when scholars discussed the relationship among satisfaction of service quality [8], organizational culture and leadership performance [44] and manufacturer-supplier [50]. Accordingly, some scholars also used satisfaction as an intermediary variable to discuss the in uence between trust with green perceived quality, green perceived risk [13] and relationship bene ts [19].
Overall, current researches mainly use ACSI model to explore the factors that affect the satisfaction. A few researches have begun to use UTAUT to explore it, but few studies integrate the two models to explore the impact of users' satisfaction and their behaviors. Therefore, this study will consider integrating ACSI and UTAUT model adding "environmental perception" variable. In addition, most scholars investigated the relationships between satisfaction and loyalty or complaint; few scholars explored the relationship between satisfaction and trust. Even though some scholars have explored the relationship between satisfaction and trust, most of them discussed satisfaction and trust as an intermediary role. This study will add "trust in State Grid" as a behavioral outcome variable for bene ciaries' satisfaction to explore the relationship between bene ciaries' satisfaction and their trust in State Grid.

The conceptual model
Based on the ACSI model, this study builds bene ciaries' satisfaction index of PPAPs. Among them, perceived value is a subjective feeling of customers on their bene ts after integrating quality and price [68], while PPAPs generally involve State Grid, government, and enterprises' behavior. Thus, the bene ciaries do not need to afford "high investment" The total incomes of the PPAPs are directly shared by the bene ciaries or together with the State Grid and village collectives. Therefore, we will not consider the in uencing factors of perceived value in this paper. The complaint and loyalty respectively represented the degree of users' dissatisfaction and lack of trust in the service provided by the product [31]. This study will combine these two consequence variables into one to explore the bene ciaries' trust in State Grid, which includes both the bene ciaries' judgment on the PPAPs' services provided by the State Grid, and the bene ciaries' credibility on it. At the same time, "social in uence" and "environmental perception" will be added to the original model in order to further explore the factors in uencing satisfaction of PPAPs. Figure 1 shows the proposed research framework of this study.

Social in uence
Social in uence means that the extent to which an individual perceives it signi cant, while others believe they should apply the new system [63]. Since solar PV is an emerging renewable energy, the bene ciaries are not fully familiar with it. Their satisfaction with PPAPs is primarily in uenced by the views, ideas, and attitudes of others. Thus, this study de nes social in uence as the extent to which the bene ciaries perceive the government o cials and village leaders who persuade them to adopt solar PV. The in uence of government o cials or village leaders is also an external environmental impact. It was found that there were indirect effects of environment and outcome expectation through constructing a theoretical framework of the factors in uencing farmers' participation in the joint-stock cooperative system from self-e ciency, outcome expectation, and external environment [74]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H1. Social in uence will have a positive impact on the behavioral expectation with PPAPs.
In terms of perceived quality, social interaction was divided into "social interaction with employees" and "social interaction with peers", simultaneously, they all had an impact on perceived service quality [16]. Government o cials and village leaders should promote residents' awareness to understand PPAPs or the program itself in their daily interactions. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H2. Social in uence will have a positive impact on the perceived quality with PPAPs.
Environmental perception is an element of judging the government's environmental governance. The more serious the public perceive environmental pollution, the lower the local government's evaluation will be. Consumers' cognition and preference for ecological technology were affected by society. Thus, it would underestimate the potential of consumers' choice for the emerging environmental technologies when neglecting the process of social in uence [6]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H3. Social in uence will have a negative impact on environmental perception with PPAPs. It was con rmed that social in uence affected citizen satisfaction through developing a model for compelling citizens to adopt e-government technology [9].
Customers could gain social acceptance from others when using a product, which would simultaneously increase social value and satisfaction [22]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H4. Social in uence will have a negative impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction with PPAPs.
Trust was an essential driving force for consumers' shopping decisions in social commerce [40]. Consumers developed familiarity and trust in the products when engaging in social interactions [72]. Personal factors, community factors, and social factors all signi cantly affected residents' social trust, which demonstrated that the improving of society trust not only need individual efforts but also need intermediary organizations' progress [73]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H5. Social in uence will have a positive impact on trust in State Grid with PPAPs.

Behavioral expectation
Expectation represents both prior consumption experience with its offering and a forecast of the company's ability to provide quality in the future [20]. The government is involved to ensure the quality of designing and implementing PPAPs. Therefore, this study de nes the behavior expectation as the degree to which the bene ciaries expected the government's behavior with PPAPs. In the energy sector, it was found that consumer expectation has a positive relationship with perceived quality [51]. Otherwise, combined with the need to build a service-oriented government, public expectation was found to have a positive impact on perceived quality [71]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H6. Behavioral expectation will have a positive impact on perceived quality with PPAPs.
A lot of researches showed that user expectation and environmental perception have direct or indirect effects on users' satisfaction and loyalty [75], but the relationship between them still has not been discussed. At present, PPAPs are still in a period of continuous development, and they still require subsidies and support from the government. Only when government attaches great importance can farmers better understand the signi cance. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H7. Behavioral expectation will have a positive impact on environmental perception with PPAPs.
Public's satisfaction could be jointly in uenced by three variables: public expectation, perception of public service quality, and perceived difference in service effectiveness [38]. Otherwise, passengers expectation was positively correlated with passengers' perceived quality and their satisfaction through the analysis of passengers' satisfaction [59,71]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H8. Behavioral expectations will have a positive impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction with PPAPs.
At present, some scholars have explored the indirect effects between customer expectation and perceived trust of customer satisfaction based on ACSI model. Customer expectation (antecedent variable) and perceived trust (result variable) is used to explore the impact on satisfaction, accordingly, customer expectation also have an indirect effect on perceived trust through satisfaction. Some scholars found that effort expectation had a signi cant impact on perceived trust as an internal belief factor for the public to use E-government [78]. Therefore, this paper proposes the following hypothetical path: H9. Behavior expectation will have a positive impact on trust in State Grid with PPAPs.
Perceived quality Perceived quality is the service quality that customers perceived, while the concept of service quality is de ned as a comparison between expectation and actual service performance [56]. In this paper, perceived quality is de ned as the bene ciaries' perceive quality changes in family energy use and environment problems after the adoption of PPAPs. Scholars found that there is often a positive relationship between perceived quality and consumers' awareness in environmental protection [14]. Consumers will feel a high quality about the product if it has an environmental label on the package, which will also encourage them to pay attention to environmental awareness [18]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H10. Perceived quality will have a positive impact on environmental perception with PPAPs. Some researchers simpli ed the perceived service quality into three dimensions, including platform perceived service quality, bicycle entity perceived quality, and value perceived quality. The platform and bicycle entity perceived service quality were found to signi cantly affect users' satisfaction [77]. In addition, the equipment quality of solar home systems (SHS) played an essential role in improving users' satisfaction in rural areas [34]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H11. Perceived quality will have a positive impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction with PPAPs.
An indirect relationship between e-service quality and green trust was found to explore the factors in uencing green purchase intention [1]. Other researchers found that perceived quality also had a direct and positive effect on trust. Green perceived quality positively affected green trust and the relationship between them was partially moderated by green satisfaction [12]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H12. Perceived quality will have a positive impact on trust in State Grid with PPAPs.

Environmental perception
Environmental perception can be divided into two aspects. One refers to the image formed by the environment in an individual's mind. The other refers to the feeling that the quality of the environment brings to the individual [55]. The environmental perception in this paper refers to the bene ciaries' perception of environmental quality due to excessive use of non-renewable energy. Environmental perception and farmers' satisfaction with deserti cation control are also highly correlated [34]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H13. Environmental perception will have a positive impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction with PPAPs.
It was found that the perception of environmental problems was an essential factor in low-carbon behavior [1], while social trust had a moderating effect between environmental fairness perception and farmers' low carbon production behavior [49]. It was also found that the trust in government had a signi cant moderating effect on the relationship between public risk perception (public environmental risk perception, public health risk perception, public economic risk perception) and neighborhood con ict intentions [12]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H14. Environmental perception will have a positive impact on trust in State Grid with PPAPs.

Bene ciaries' satisfaction
Satisfaction is an overall affective response to a perceived discrepancy between prior expectation and perceived performance after consumption [54]. This study de nes satisfaction as the sense of happiness formed by the bene ciaries through the previous expectation and actual perception. Some scholars con rmed a close connection between trust and users' satisfaction in mobile commerce [32,58]. In addition, scholars found that consumers' green satisfaction has a signi cant effect on green trust in the research on users' word-of-mouth intentions of the green hotel industry [43]. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothetical path: H15. Bene ciaries' satisfaction will have a positive impact on trust in State Grid with PPAPs.

Data collection and participants
The empirical part of this study was an extensive sample questionnaire conducted in 8 provinces of China

Questionnaire
The main contents of the questionnaire include the basic characteristics of the household population, such as gender, age, household register, education background, whether they are village leaders or not. Otherwise, it also includes what kind of PPAPs they have bene ted from, the satisfaction degree with the implementation of PPAPs, the perception of environmental condition, energy use situation, etc. The alpha value of Cronbach was also tested. According to the recommendations of [53], all construction values should be higher than 0.70. Table 1, the actual number of distributed questionnaires was 940, and 928 (98.7%) valid questionnaires were obtained after deleting incomplete and inconsistent questionnaires. The object of this study is rural residents who bene ted from PPAP. The majority (76.9%) of bene ciaries interviewed were male. The bene ciaries within the age group of 50-59 years old were about 27.6%, while bene ciaries of 40-49 years old and 60-69 years old respectively accounted for 23.5% and 23.2%, and the age group less than 20 years old (0.6%) was the smallest proportion. In terms of education level, the largest group was primary school degrees (50.4%), followed by high school degrees (26.4%). Regarding household registration, most of the current samples (98.6%) were those who have rural household registration, about 1.4% were non-farm household registration. Among the bene ciaries interviewed, most (98.3%) belongs to ordinary villagers, while only 1.7% belongs to village leaders.

Results
Preliminary data analysis and test of statistics will be rst provided in Sect. 5.1. Then the two-stage SEM will be introduced, which was used to verify the conceptual model and test its associated hypotheses. The results of con rmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the rst phase are provided in Sect. 5.2, and the structural model of the SEM in the second stage is presented in Sect. 5.3.

Descriptive statistics
As shown in Table 2, bene ciaries seem to have a relatively satisfactory view of PPAP for all the aspects considered in the current study. For example, the average mean of behavioral expectation items was 4.578, while the average standard deviation was 0.672, which indicated that the bene ciaries were positive about the government's behavior in PPAPs. The quality improvement brought by PPAPs was relatively obvious for the bene ciaries, as the average mean of perceived quality items was 3.469 (0.933). Likewise, the implementation of PPAPs was considered satisfactory for the bene ciaries, since the average mean of bene ciaries' satisfaction items was 3.920 (0.643). The majority of participants believed that the State Grid was trustworthy in PPAPs, as the average mean of trust in State Grid items was 3.997 (0.786). In addition, the average mean of these two factors was as follows: social in uence (3.506; 1.168) and environmental perception (3.504; 0.870), which means that the bene ciaries also gave positive evaluations for the two innovative factors added to the PPAPs.
This study designed the Likert ve-point scale, as shown in Table 3. There are 6 latent variables and 21 items in the questionnaire. SI represents social in uence, BE refers to behavioral expectation, PQ is perceived quality, and EP denotes environmental perception, BS represents bene ciaries' satisfaction, TSG stands for trust in State Grid. In all measured variables, the kurtosis coe cient (kurtosis) is less than 8, and the skew coe cient (skew) is less than 3. It can be considered that the data are basically in conformity with the normal distribution

Con rmatory factor analysis
From the KMO and the Bartlett sphericity test, the KMO value was 0.800, indicating that the sample data had high validity. The signi cance level of the Bartlett sphericity test was 0.000 less than 0.005. Therefore, the null hypothesis of the Bartlett sphericity test was rejected and the data was considered suitable for factor analysis. The principal component analysis method was adopted to perform exploratory analysis with the data, and ve common factors were set to be extracted, and then the maximum variance method was used to rotate the factor. The factor load matrix after the rotation is shown in Table 4, the factor load values of each measurement item on its associated variable were all greater than 0.50, and the factor load of the cross-measure item did not exceed 0.50, indicating that the scale had good convergence and discriminant validity.
The reliability and validity of the measurement model were further analyzed by using multiple criteria. Firstly, Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) were adopted to test the internal consistency of the variables. CR values for all latent variables were calculated and found to be not less than 0.70 [21,24]. As shown in Table 5 The factor loading value (Estimate) of each latent variable corresponding to the observed variable was considered to test the convergence validity [24]. It was generally required that factor loading value and average variance extracted (AVE) were greater than 0.50. The factor loading values in Table 6 were all greater than 0.5, which were in line with the recommendations of [24]. The model is a very ideal state when the factor loading value was greater than 0.71 and the AVE value was 0.50. Accordingly, it is good when the factor loading value was greater than 0.63, and the AVE value was 0.40 [62]. AVE values corresponding to each latent variable in Table 5 were greater than 0.5, indicating that these variables were in a very ideal state. Though the AVE value of bene ciaries' satisfaction was 0.480, it still indicated that the variable was in a good condition. Therefore, the above shows that the model had good convergence validity.
The discriminant validity of latent variables was also tested. If the correlation coe cients were less than the square roots of their corresponding AVE values, then it can be considered that different variables have obvious discriminant validity [21]. As shown in Table 7, the correlation coe cient of each variable was less than the square root of its corresponding AVE value, so the model is considered to have good discriminant validity.
Furthermore, CFA was involved to test the applicability of the model at rst phase. The models' overall t evaluation indexes were considered, such as absolute adaptation indexes (χ²/df, RMR, SRMR, RMSEA, GFI, AGFI), value-added adaptation indexes (NFI, RFI, IFI, TLI, CFI), simple adaptation indexes (PGFI, PNFI, CN, PCFI). As shown in Table 8, one index of absolute adaptation indexes (SRMR) was not within the standard level, and SRMR was close to the adaptation standard. To sum up, the theoretical model constructed in this study has a good t for the sample data.
Finally, a common method deviation test was conducted by considering Harman's single factor [25,56]. Harman's single factor test for EFA was conducted on 21 observed variables, and was checked with a non-rotation factor solution. It was clearly found that there were no newly recorded factors, and the variation rate of the rst factor was recorded as 21.401%. Thus, there was no need to worry about the deviation of the general method of the current research data.
According to the suggestion of [56], this value was not higher than 50%.

Structural model
In the second phase, AMOS 23.0 was used to test the research hypotheses of the conceptual model. The conceptual model also supported prediction validity.
As for the test of the research hypotheses (Table 9) the results also con rmed that there was an interaction among these factors. For example, BE (γ = 0.264, p < 0.001); PQ (γ = 0.308, p < 0.001); EP (γ= -0. 0.340, p < 0.001) will be affected by social in uence, while PQ (γ = 0.143, p < 0.001); EP(γ = 0.245, p < 0.001) will be affected by behavioral expectation, and perceived quality will also affect EP (γ = 0.245, p < 0.001), as shown in Fig. 2. The variance in ation factors (VIF) were tested to ensure that there was no multicollinearity between independent factors and dependent factors. Table 9 indicated that VIF values of all causal associations were not higher than 10, meaning that there was no problem of multicollinearity [7,15]. The direct, indirect and total effect values of each research path were further explored. As shown in Table 10, the largest impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction was for EP (0.

Discussion
The results of the path coe cient analysis con rmed most of the proposed hypotheses. As shown in Table 9, environmental perception was the most in uential factor predicting bene ciaries' satisfaction. This proves the importance of environmental perception in the residents' satisfaction of PPAPs. Rural residents mostly rely on planting crops as their main source of income, while their incomes are affected by the air or water pollution and extreme weather.
Compared with traditional energy sources, the use of solar PV can greatly improve the current environmental situation. Therefore, rural residents are satis ed with PPAPs as they believed that PPAPs can alleviate the current environmental problems. There was a signi cant positive effect between passengers' environmental perception and satisfaction [76].The State Grid is involved in dealing with PV power generation and grid connection issues. Power supply stability can promote the extensive use of clean energy and reduce the use of traditional fossil fuels [30]. Therefore, as residents have stronger perception of the environment, they can understand better that the efforts made by the State Grid will effectively solve environmental problems. Then, they are more likely to trust the State Grid. Some researches indicated that with higher individuals' understanding of information literacy, more people will trust the website [35].
Social in uence had a negative effect on bene ciaries' satisfaction, while it had a positive effect on the trust in State Grid. The result is different from the previous researches [3,9,28]. Their research found that social in uence had a greatly positive impact on users' satisfaction. Users can understand the products' quality and situation through multiple channels of the network, so their satisfaction about the product was higher after adoption. In this study, most bene ciaries are poverty-stricken households, whose understandings of the projects are mainly through the recommendation and publicity of village leaders, etc. There are multiple gaps between the high expectation and the actual bene ts of the projects, resulting in the lower satisfaction of residents with PPAPs. It is reasonable for the residents to have a lower satisfaction with PPAPs in a short term, but this cannot prove that the residents won't be perceived positive satisfaction from the long run.
According to the results, perceived quality was con rmed to have the strongest positive effect on the trust in State Grid and have a positive effect on bene ciaries' satisfaction. As for the State Grid, its main responsibility is to ensure the e cient generation of PV panels. This will not only bring e cient use of household energy and cost savings to bene ciaries, but also further improve the environmental quality. Therefore, the residents only perceive the reduction in household energy consumption and the improvement in environmental quality, and they will believe that the State Grid has ful lled their responsibilities. This is similar to the results by Sarkar and Chen [12,58]. Furthermore, the residents were satis ed with PPAPs when they realized that a more energy-e cient method can bring bene ts for their families and communities. In previous researches, the users' perception of solar home systems' bene ts and the reduction in their energy costs had a critical impact on their satisfaction [34].
Behavior expectation can directly facilitate bene ciaries' satisfaction, but indirectly encourage their trust in State Grid. At present, PPAPs still rely on government publicity and support. Therefore, if the government can promulgate policies, subsidies and other support for solar PV in time, the residents' satisfaction with PPAPs will be enhanced, which was similar to the results found by Zhang and Shen [59,71]. In this paper, behavior expectation refers to the residents' expectation on the government's support on PPAPs, so it may not have a direct signi cant impact on their trust in State Grid. But when the residents actually realize the bene ts of PPAPs in their lives, such as reduction in household energy expenditure, they may believe that the State Grid plays a vital role in PPAPs. In this way, their trust in State Grid can be enhanced. Therefore, even though behavior expectation had no direct effect on the trust in State Grid, it can be a essential factor for the trust in State Grid through perceived quality. Likewise, customer expectation was con rmed to have an indirect role in promoting social trust [47].
The results of this study supported the hypothesis that bene ciaries' satisfaction had a positive impact on the trust in State Grid. This indicates that the more satis ed the residents are with PPAPs, the more they will trust in State Grid. China State Grid implement "one-stop service" to ensure safe and stable operations of PV equipment, whether it is in the early stage, mid-stream maintenance, or later tracking services, etc. However, these all involve the relationship between bene ciaries and the State Grid. When the residents are satis ed with PPAPs, meaning that they are satis ed with the services provided by the State Grid, then they will rely on State Grid and continue to participate in PPAPs. The predecessors also found a signi cant role between trust and customers' satisfaction [32,57]. Inadequate power supply and unreliable power service will lead to end-users' dissatisfaction with power service [60].

Theoretical implications
As discussed in the literature review, few scholars have studied the direct relationship between satisfaction and trust from the perspective of bene ciaries. In addition, most satisfaction models were based on ACSI [20] to test customers' satisfaction or explore the relationship between satisfaction and users' complaints [29], loyalty [45] or adoption willingness [3].
This study, hence, establishes an integrated model based on ACSI and UTAUT with the dimension of "environmental perception" to examine the bene ciary perception about the environmental bene ts of PPAPs, and provides a new dimension and theoretical models for critical aspects that bene ciaries should consider in the process of building PPAPs' satisfaction.

Limitations And Future Research Directions
Although this study has enriched our understandings of the current implementation of PPAPs in China, some limitations still exist. Firstly, the data used in this paper are cross-sectional due to the fact that the implementation period of PPAP in China is not long. The data can re ect the current views of the bene ciaries on the projects, but it cannot show the changed satisfaction of the bene ciaries in the process of PPAPs. Therefore, in the future researches, longitudinal research is needed to nd out the factors that affect the PPAPs' bene ciaries' satisfaction over time. Secondly, although the current research model covers many factors, other factors involving household energy usage, rural residents' cognition, and power supply stability before and after project implementation, etc. can also be considered in the future researches to fully explain the reasons for affecting the sustainable development of PPAPs. In addition, this study has not considered the impact of family cultural factors (such as energy saving habits, family size and lifestyle). Future studies will ponder over these cultural aspects to enrich current understandings of the main factors that hinder or support the success of PPAPs.

Conclusions
This study attempts to provide more understandings about what may affect bene ciaries' satisfaction with PPAPs and their trust in State Grid. Behavioral expectation (BE) and perceived quality (PQ) were used to predict bene ciaries' satisfaction in this paper. Environmental Perception (EP) was also considered as the unique features of PPAPs. Thus, this further provides a more practical and empirical understanding of the main factors that should be considered in the sustainable development of solar PV. Finally, this study intends to propose the following policy recommendations from the behavior of the government, village leaders, and State Grid.
1. Environmental perception was the most in uential factor predicting bene ciaries' satisfaction. It means that only when residents' environmental perception is enhanced, they will be more satis ed with PPAPs and adopt solar PV. The Chinese government and village leaders, therefore, should explain the current environment problems to residents for boosting the use of daily energy, and make concerted effort to help residents better understand that solar PV can bring more environmental bene ts comparing with traditional energy (including coal, fuel wood, straw, etc.). Furthermore, environmental perception also has a crucial impact on the trust in State Grid. The State Grid also should promptly explain the current implementation of renewable energy projects to residents. By doing this, they can understand the improvement of environmental problems caused by these projects. Only by enhancing the environmental perception of the residents, can their satisfaction and trust in State Grid be increased.
2. Social in uence had a negative impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction and a positive impact on the trust in State Grid. In fact, if the government or village leaders excessively force the residents to participate in the PPAPs, it may not bring good results, making the residents feel resistant instead. Therefore, the government or village leaders should enhance residents' understanding of PPAPs by conducting appropriate publicity and education. Otherwise, through sharing their personal experience of using PPAPs and recommending suitable PPAPs' type to residents. When promoting PPAPs with residents, the government or village leaders should also rst let the residents fully understand the credibility of the State Grid in solar energy projects, so as to increase trust in State Grid.
3. Perceived quality had the most important impact on trust in State Grid. In order to enhance the residents' quality perception of household energy usage and expenditure, the government and village leaders should rst explain the operation, maintenance, service and quality assurance of PPAPs' throughout the process to residents. At the same time, in order to ensure the reliability of the data obtained by the bene ciaries and the professional quality of the equipment, the State Grid's technicians should implement full-tracking services and regularly maintain the equipment in PPAPs, thus the residents may learn more about the transformation of the quality of household energy. The low quality of equipment and high energy costs both have a negative impact on the satisfaction of households using solar PV [34]. Therefore, learning about the integration of the PPAPs' implementation process can improve residents' perceived quality. 4. Behavioral expectation had a direct impact on bene ciaries' satisfaction and an indirect impact on the trust in State Grid. The residents expect the government's subsidies, policies and maintenance of facilities. Affected by the epidemic, the country has made appropriate adjustments to the distribution of PV poverty alleviation bene ts and electricity prices. These policy changes should be greatly publicized by the local government and village leaders. And then residents can perceive the government's full support for PPAPs. Accordingly, the State Grid should also adjust electricity prices in a timely manner so that residents can perceive improvements in household energy quality, promoting their trust in grid corporations in an underlying manner.  Validation of the Conceptual Model. Notes: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.