Strike while the rebate is hot: Savvy consumers and strategic technology adoption timing

D.C. Reeves and V. Rai

Energy Policy, 2018, vol. 121, issue C, 325-335

Abstract: The California Solar Initiative (CSI) rebate program disbursed more than two billion dollars in incentives to install solar photovoltaics (PV) over roughly a decade while “stepping-down” rebate levels as installed capacity goals were reached. The exact dates (i.e., timing) of the stepdown events were not known, yet recent analyses find evidence of an “announcement effect” wherein consumer adoption is “pulled-forward” across these stepdown events. We analyze unique data from our recent household-level survey on the decision-making process for 194 of these very consumers within a narrow window of eight CSI rebate stepdown events, comparing the decision-making processes of pulled-forward consumers to their counterparts that adopt just after a rebate stepdown.

Keywords: Solar photovoltaics; Technology adoption; Decision-making; Rebate pass-through; Announcement effect; Consumer behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518304336
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:121:y:2018:i:c:p:325-335

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.06.045

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().