A University of Technology Sydney (UTS) study has found a ‘neighbourhood effect’ increases adoption of rooftop solar, external to other influences like government rebates, based on socio-economic data, with potential insights for clean energy policy makers.
The ‘Solar Energy Surge: The socio-economic determinants of the photovoltaic systems growth in Australia’ research, found Australia’s initial uptake of solar was prompted by government-driven schemes but over time correlates increasingly by what neighbours are doing.
To detect the presence of a neighbourhood effect, researchers developed a formula to simplify quantification, finding that gender, share of certain age groups, land area and dwellings with a vehicle do not correlate with adoption.
Image: University of Technology, Sydney
They found, however, variables such as marital status, weekly household income, number of bedrooms, population and dwellings densities to have influences, positively and negatively, while the accelerate rate of uptake resulted in 15-20 more rooftop solar systems being installed in a neighbourhood.
“As much as decisions in adopting are made based on economic sense, decisions borne of emotions do occur,” the research paper says.
“More dominant to decision-making is the influence of surroundings, and not the perceived assessment of outcomes … and best explain the prevalence of neighbourhood effects in technology adoptions, such as solar installations.”
The study tracked data concerning solar panel installations per month per postal area (POA) across Australia from 2001 to 2022 pooled for a cross sectional regression analysis against the census data pack from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
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