Research from Switzerland finds homeowners whose neighbors install a solar system become more likely to install a solar system themselves, adopt an electric vehicle and reduce their electricity consumption.
Installing a solar PV system can influence the energy-related behavior of neighboring households, new research has found.
In the research paper “Green spills: Peer effects in pro-environmental behaviors,” available in the Journal of Public Economics, Benedikt Janzen, from Germany’s University of Passau, and Patrick Bigler, from Switzerland’s University of Lausanne, analyzed geocoded data on 260,000 Swiss households in the canton of Bern observed between 2008 and 2019.
Their data combined information on electricity use, solar PV and electricity vehicle (EV) ownership and household characteristics. They also measured the density of nearby PV installations based on the distance between households and solar systems in each year, allowing them to examine how changes in local PV adoption affected neighboring households’ energy behavior.
Janzen and Bigler told pv magazine their findings confirmed that when a household installs a solar PV system, neighboring homes become more likely to install solar PV themselves, adopt an EV and reduce their electricity consumption.
