The Role of Economic Versus Behavioral Factors in Differentiating Solar Adopters From Solar Considerers in the United States

Abstract

Despite the rising interest in residential solar photovoltaic panels (PV), the percent of homeowners that install them is relatively low in the United States. While most studies focus on explaining the intention to adopt solar, the objective of this study is to understand systematic differences between solar adopters (those with leased or purchased PV) and solar considerers (those who talked to an installer but did not install). Based on two similar survey data, one from solar adopters and the other from considerers, we fit a multi-level mixed-effects probit regression model to identify key factors that differentiates the two types of homeowners. Our results suggest that solar adopters have higher risk aversion, stronger pro-environmental personal norms, and reside in zip codes with several PV installations. Solar considerers have a higher level of concern on the economic and financial aspects of solar and a higher degree of novelty-seeking, compared to solar adopters. The identification of individual traits versus economic barriers that differentiate solar adopters from considerers may help inform policymakers as well as solar installers.

Keywords: Multi-level model, Probit regression, microeconomics, energy economics, solar energy, risk aversion