Adoption of Sustainable Energy Management Systems Among Healthcare Institutions in Malaysia: A Conceptual Paper

Malaysia's demand for healthcare services will increase exponentially in the coming years due to the wave of retiring people and several other factors, including climate change's effects on people's health. Sustainable energy management systems (SEMS) are urgently needed to meet energy demands correlating to the high demand for healthcare services and rising energy prices. Only a few hospitals have been certified with internationally recognised green building and energy management criteria like LEEDs, and ISO50001 which ensure some form of SEMS. Several others have only basic certifications or SEMS and many have none. There is scarce local research using factors like organisation and business environment (OE) in studying SEMS adoption among hospitals. The study aims to understand Malaysian hospital managerial intentions toward adopting SEMS using the OE framework. Significant factors will be analysed quantitatively and translated into feedback and recommendations to improve the adoption rate of SEMS. A follow-up qualitative study will aid in deeply understanding hospitals’ issues and seek insight into the latest developments, further contributing to the overall research. Convenience-sampled responses from 160 hospital managers (public and private) throughout Malaysia will be chosen for the study in a multi-method approach. Partial Least Squares (PLS) version 4.0 software and NVIVO4 will test the relationship between constructs in this research.