I spot, I adopt! Peer effects and visibility in solar photovoltaic system adoption of households

Johannes Rode and Sven Müller

VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We study variation of peer effects in rooftop photovoltaic adoption by households. Our investigation employs geocoded data on all potential adopters and on all grid-connected photovoltaic systems set up in Germany through 2010. We construct an individual measure of peer effects for each potential adopter. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in two dimensions of photovoltaic system roof appropriateness of neighbors: their inclination and their orientation. Using discrete choice models with panel data, we find evidence for causal peer effects. However, the impact of one previously installed PV system on current adoption decreases over time. We also show that visible PV systems cause an increase in the odds of installing which is up to three times higher in comparison to all PV systems. At rural locations visibility may be less important, which indicates that word-of-mouth communication plays a stronger role.

Keywords: Causal peer effects; installed base; discrete choice; technology adoption and diffusion; solar photovoltaic panels; visibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 O33 Q55 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-ene, nep-net, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/224644/1/vfs-2020-pid-40501.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: I Spot, I Adopt! Peer Effects and Visibility in Solar Photovoltaic System Adoption of Households (2020)
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:zbw:vfsc20:224644

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().