Motivation Crowding in Peer Effects: The Effect of Solar Subsidies on Green Power Purchases

Andrea La Nauze

No 8940, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: I test whether economic incentives dampen peer effects in public-good settings. I study how a visible and subsidized contribution to a public good (installing solar panels) affects peer contributions that are neither subsidized nor visible (electing green power). Exploiting spatial variation in the feasibility of installing solar panels, I find that panels increase voluntary purchases of green power by neighbors. However, using sharp changes in government incentives over time, I find that the magnitude of the spillover depends on the level of subsidies to solar. The results support the hypothesis that signals drive peer responses to visible public-good contributions and that economic incentives blur those signals.

Keywords: motivation; public goods contribution; solar panels; green energy; environmental public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-hme, nep-net and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8940.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Motivation Crowding in Peer Effects: The Effect of Solar Subsidies on Green Power Purchases (2023)
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:ces:ceswps:_8940

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().