Addressing Biases that Impact Homeowners’ Adoption of Solar Panels

Howard Kunreuther, Anna Polise and Quinlyn Spellmeyer

No 28678, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Solar power is now economically competitive with fossil fuels in many countries, yet relatively few homeowners have installed solar panels on their property. A principal reason for this behavior stems from cognitive biases—such as myopia, inertia and herding—that cause consumers to avoid investing in long-term measures, even those that are financially attractive to them and produce social benefits such as reducing the long-term consequences of climate change. A behavioral risk audit can demonstrate ways to address these cognitive biases, in concert with short-term economic incentives and social influences. We focus on the installation of solar panels, an issue that has relevance to residents in the United States and the European Union, and to property owned by businesses and governments.

JEL-codes: H31 Q42 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-pke
Note: EEE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Howard Kunreuther & Anna Polise & Quinlyn Spellmeyer, 2022. "Addressing Biases that impact homeowners’ adoption of solar panels," Climate Policy, vol 22(8), pages 993-999.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28678.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:28678

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28678

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().