Social Learning and Solar Photovoltaic Adoption
研究了一项大规模行为干预，通过社会学习和同伴互动鼓励居民安装太阳能光伏系统，发现干预使每个城市平均增加37个安装，并降低了安装价格。
Growing literature points to the effectiveness of leveraging social interactions and nudges to spur adoption of prosocial behaviors. This study investigates a large-scale behavioral intervention designed to actively leverage social learning and peer interactions to encourage adoption of residential solar photovoltaic systems. Municipalities choose a solar installer offering group pricing and undertake an informational campaign driven by volunteer ambassadors. We find a causal treatment effect of 37 installations per municipality from the campaigns and no evidence of harvesting or persistence. The intervention also lowers installation prices. Randomized controlled trials based on the intervention show that selection into the program is important, whereas group pricing is not. Our results suggest that the program provided economies of scale and lowered consumer acquisition costs, leading to low-cost emission reductions. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.