Information interventions can increase technology adoption through information network restructuring

Abstract

Summary: The rapid adoption of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) is recasting the role of individual households as a dynamic and potent construct critical for emissions mitigation and resilience of the electricity system. As residential PV enters more risk-averse customer segments, broader deployment of residential PV depends on overcoming both financial and informational barriers to adoption. Fast-changing residential PV technologies and associated policies means there is both lack of information and often misinformation among customers—gaps that are addressed effectively with local, trusted information networks, especially for big-ticket items such as residential PV. Here, we use an extensively validated agent-based model of residential PV adoption to analyze the effectiveness of different information intervention designs in spurring PV diffusion. We show that intervention designs are effective when they balance long-distance connections and local reinforcement, matching the intervention to both the informational needs of potential adopters and the structure of the underlying network.

Keywords

• Applied sciences
• Green engineering
• Solar terrestrial physics