Understanding resistance to innovation

Media out­lets often report that French people are opposed to innov­a­tion. Recent examples include fig­ures show­ing that only a small num­ber of people are will­ing to get vac­cin­ated against Cov­id-19 or the con­tro­versy around 5G net­works. But these atti­tudes are hardly sur­pris­ing when we look at research into res­ist­ance to innovation.

There are many examples of product or ser­vice innov­a­tions that set off very strong res­ist­ance among poten­tial users. One inter­est­ing illus­tra­tion is the Linky smart elec­tri­city meters that are being rolled out in France since last year. It’s not just house­holds that are wary of them, but also – and more sur­pris­ingly – loc­al coun­cils, which usu­ally act as inter­me­di­ar­ies to facil­it­ate the roll-out of innov­a­tions. Groups have formed to fight against and pre­vent these new meters from being imple­men­ted across the coun­try. Mem­bers of this move­ment organ­ise protests, share tips on how to reject the install­a­tion of a new meter, or restrict access to technicians.

These new-gen­er­a­tion meters show hour-by-hour con­sump­tion, allow remote oper­a­tions, and are provided for free. So, what explains this (some­times viol­ent) res­ist­ance, when the Linky meters per­form bet­ter in every way? Our research aims to under­stand the sources of res­ist­ance and how it’s expressed through loc­al coun­cils – more than 1,000 have issued decrees against the new smart meters ¹.

A per­son may not have adop­ted a product simply because they were unaware of its exist­ence or characteristics.

Res­ist­ance goes bey­ond refus­ing to embrace innov­a­tion. A per­son may not adopt a product simply because they don’t know it exists or what its fea­tures are. As such, some­times simply try­ing out a new product can lead to users adopt­ing it.

The notion of “res­ist­ance to innov­a­tion” implies a con­scious decision. Here, the per­son is mak­ing the choice not to adopt a new product or ser­vice. This res­ist­ance is gradu­al and can mani­fest itself in a wait-and-see atti­tude where the per­son holds out for bet­ter terms and con­di­tions. This is the case when the con­sumer finds an innov­a­tion inter­est­ing but would rather wait for it to become wide­spread and adop­ted by many before using it themselves.

In con­trast, res­ist­ance can be very viol­ent when the goal is to make an innov­a­tion flop. This phe­nomen­on has a vari­ety of ori­gins, but there is a cer­tain cor­rel­a­tion between the source and the intens­ity of the res­ist­ance. Res­ist­ance can come from iner­tia, for instance, the con­sumer feel­ing com­fort­able with their habits, dis­in­ter­ested in adopt­ing new products or meth­ods. Worse still, the con­sumer might see an innov­a­tion as overly com­plex in some way, or simply have a neg­at­ive image of it.

Anoth­er pos­sible source of res­ist­ance can be traced to the dis­rup­tion of norms or tra­di­tions through innov­a­tion, e.g. genet­ic­ally-mod­i­fied pro­duce, which raises ques­tions about wheth­er manip­u­lat­ing DNA is a socially accept­able prac­tice. Lastly, the con­sumer may per­ceive cer­tain risks in adopt­ing the innov­a­tion. There are mul­tiple kinds of risks – risk to phys­ic­al safety, eco­nom­ic risk (“If I spend the money on this product, will it be worth it? What are the poten­tial hid­den costs?”), func­tion­al risk (“Will the product really per­form like it’s meant to?”) and social risk (“Will the people I hold dear see this innov­a­tion as a pos­it­ive thing?”).

As noted by Kleijn­en et al. (2009), innov­a­tion that dis­rupts tra­di­tions and norms, when likely to involve phys­ic­al risk for con­sumers, is the most likely to encounter very strong, cult-like res­ist­ance ².

To find the sources of res­ist­ance to the Linky meters, we ana­lysed around 500 loc­al coun­cil reports and decrees enacted across France to delay or pre­vent them from being rolled out. Our res­ults showed that, in addi­tion to believ­ing that meters didn’t improve things in any way, agents of res­ist­ance saw them as a source of a wide range of risks.

Our cluster ana­lys­is shows five kinds of coun­cils who each had very dif­fer­ent reas­ons for reject­ing, or at least delay­ing, the roll-out in their muni­cip­al­ity. Their argu­ments related to the tech­nic­al fea­tures (lifespan, elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves) but also to the risks con­nec­ted to a dis­puted roll-out. This debate gave rise to forms of res­ist­ance that ranged from a morator­i­um to a full ban. Some coun­cils focused on envir­on­ment­al argu­ments relat­ing to repla­cing mil­lions of meters with ones for which the lifespan is poten­tially three times short­er. Some high­lighted the per­ceived risks due to fire, elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves or data breach. Oth­ers emphas­ised risks of dis­turb­ance because some house­holds would not accept the roll-out. Oth­ers argued that repla­cing the meters should be the remit of coun­cils them­selves; or they brought up all these argu­ments and insisted that the new meters provide no bene­fit to the end user.

The most pro­nounced forms of res­ist­ance came from coun­cils that invoked own­er­ship of the meters, and thereby banned the roll-out in their ter­rit­ory by muni­cip­al decree. This is just one example of how research into any innov­a­tion must include an in-depth ana­lys­is of con­sumer per­cep­tion and beha­viour. Oth­er­wise, there’s a risk of encoun­ter­ing a very high level of res­ist­ance, no mat­ter the level of tech­no­lo­gic­al prowess presen­ted by their innovation.