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While some innovations are supposed to provide many advantages to society, paradoxically, their rollout can generate a strong resistance. Literature on resistance to innovation has mainly focused on final consumers: this article explores resistance from a meso perspective, i.e., actors at the interface between firms and final consumers, whose role is to contribute to the innovation's rollout. We study the case of Linky, the French smart meter developed by the firm Enedis, which generated resistance from than 600 municipalities, as intermediary between Enedis and citizens, who refused or postponed its adoption. Through a quantitative design, we examine the link between the nature of municipalities' arguments and their level of resistance. This study reveals five different strategies adopted by municipalities to resist the rollout of smart meters in France. We show that intermediaries strategies of resistance go beyond the traditional arguments outlined in innovation literature, and are associated with different degrees of resistance.
