IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v74y2019i3d10.1007_s10640-019-00374-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conservation Spillovers: The Effect of Rooftop Solar on Climate Change Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Graham Beattie

    (Loyola Marymount University)

  • Yi Han

    (University of Pittsburgh)

  • Andrea La Nauze

    (University of Pittsburgh)

Abstract

Biased beliefs about climate change may lead to under-regulation of emissions. We study a new channel by which the public form beliefs about climate change: visible mitigation actions. By exploiting the rapid growth of rooftop solar panels, a large survey, and differences in incentives to install solar, we find that visible mitigation actions have a positive impact on belief in basic climate science. However, we also find that higher solar penetration reduces concern about the impacts of climate change, which may dampen demand for additional mitigation policy and individual abatement effort. Our results suggest that government policies that incentivize technology adoption can have subtle but important spillover effects on beliefs and other behaviors.

Suggested Citation

  • Graham Beattie & Yi Han & Andrea La Nauze, 2019. "Conservation Spillovers: The Effect of Rooftop Solar on Climate Change Beliefs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(3), pages 1425-1451, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:74:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-019-00374-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-019-00374-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-019-00374-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-019-00374-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tatyana Deryugina & Olga Shurchkov, 2016. "The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-14, April.
    2. Jonathan E. Hughes & Molly Podolefsky, 2015. "Getting Green with Solar Subsidies: Evidence from the California Solar Initiative," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 235-275.
    3. Comin, Diego & Rode, Johannes, 2013. "From Green Users to Green Voters," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 63678, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    4. Dan M. Kahan & Ellen Peters & Maggie Wittlin & Paul Slovic & Lisa Larrimore Ouellette & Donald Braman & Gregory Mandel, 2012. "The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(10), pages 732-735, October.
    5. Herrnstadt, Evan & Muehlegger, Erich, 2014. "Weather, salience of climate change and congressional voting," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 435-448.
    6. Byrnes, Liam & Brown, Colin & Foster, John & Wagner, Liam D., 2013. "Australian renewable energy policy: Barriers and challenges," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 711-721.
    7. Russell Golman & George Loewenstein & Karl Ove Moene & Luca Zarri, 2016. "The Preference for Belief Consonance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 165-188, Summer.
    8. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2016. "Mindful Economics: The Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 141-164, Summer.
    9. Millner, Antony & Olivier, Helene, 2016. "Beliefs, politics, and environmental policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67299, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Antony Millner & Hélène Ollivier, 2016. "Beliefs, Politics, and Environmental Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 226-244.
    11. Dastrup, Samuel R. & Graff Zivin, Joshua & Costa, Dora L. & Kahn, Matthew E., 2012. "Understanding the Solar Home price premium: Electricity generation and “Green” social status," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 961-973.
    12. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    13. Matthew E. Kahn & Matthew J. Kotchen, 2011. "Business Cycle Effects On Concern About Climate Change: The Chilling Effect Of Recession," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(03), pages 257-273.
    14. Bryan Bollinger & Kenneth Gillingham, 2012. "Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar Photovoltaic Panels," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 900-912, November.
    15. Tatyana Deryugina, 2013. "How do people update? The effects of local weather fluctuations on beliefs about global warming," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 397-416, May.
    16. Seth H. Werfel, 2017. "Household behaviour crowds out support for climate change policy when sufficient progress is perceived," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(7), pages 512-515, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Lamp, 2023. "Sunspots That Matter: The Effect of Weather on Solar Technology Adoption," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(4), pages 1179-1219, April.
    2. Andrea La Nauze, 2023. "Motivation Crowding in Peer Effects: The Effect of Solar Subsidies on Green Power Purchases," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1465-1480, November.
    3. Zhang, Jianhua & Ballas, Dimitris & Liu, Xiaolong, 2023. "Neighbourhood-level spatial determinants of residential solar photovoltaic adoption in the Netherlands," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 1239-1248.
    4. Chamila R. Perera & Hassan Kalantari & Lester W. Johnson, 2022. "Climate Change Beliefs, Personal Environmental Norms and Environmentally Conscious Behaviour Intention," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-15, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew G. Meyer, 2022. "Do economic conditions affect climate change beliefs and support for climate action? Evidence from the US in the wake of the Great Recession," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 64-86, January.
    2. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    3. Stefan Lamp, 2023. "Sunspots That Matter: The Effect of Weather on Solar Technology Adoption," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(4), pages 1179-1219, April.
    4. Sandra Rousseau & Nick Deschacht, 2020. "Public Awareness of Nature and the Environment During the COVID-19 Crisis," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(4), pages 1149-1159, August.
    5. Crago, Christine L. & Koegler, Eric, 2018. "Drivers of growth in commercial-scale solar PV capacity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 481-491.
    6. Frey, Elaine F. & Mojtahedi, Saba, 2018. "The impact of solar subsidies on California's non-residential sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 27-35.
    7. Johannes Mauritzen, 2017. "Cost, Contractors and Scale: An Empirical Analysis of the California Solar Market," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 6).
    8. Douenne, Thomas & Fabre, Adrien, 2020. "French attitudes on climate change, carbon taxation and other climate policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    9. Corey Lang & John David Ryder, 2016. "The effect of tropical cyclones on climate change engagement," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 625-638, April.
    10. Andrea La Nauze, 2023. "Motivation Crowding in Peer Effects: The Effect of Solar Subsidies on Green Power Purchases," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1465-1480, November.
    11. Best, Rohan & Chareunsy, Andrea, 2022. "The impact of income on household solar panel uptake: Exploring diverse results using Australian data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    12. Crago, Christine Lasco & Chernyakhovskiy, Ilya, 2017. "Are policy incentives for solar power effective? Evidence from residential installations in the Northeast," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 132-151.
    13. Ziegler, Andreas, 2015. "On the relevance of ideology and environmental values for climate change beliefs, climate policy support, and climate protection activities: An empirical cross country analysis," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112918, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Michael Peneder & Spyros Arvanitis & Christian Rammer & Tobias Stucki & Martin Wörter, 2022. "Policy instruments and self-reported impacts of the adoption of energy saving technologies in the DACH region," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 369-404, May.
    15. Mireille Chiroleu‐Assouline & Thomas P. Lyon, 2020. "Merchants of doubt: Corporate political action when NGO credibility is uncertain," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 439-461, April.
    16. Moroni, Stefano & Antoniucci, Valentina & Bisello, Adriano, 2016. "Energy sprawl, land taking and distributed generation: towards a multi-layered density," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 266-273.
    17. Lan, Haifeng & Gou, Zhonghua & Yang, Linchuan, 2020. "House price premium associated with residential solar photovoltaics and the effect from feed-in tariffs: A case study of Southport in Queensland, Australia," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 907-916.
    18. Palm, Alvar & Lantz, Björn, 2020. "Information dissemination and residential solar PV adoption rates: The effect of an information campaign in Sweden," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    19. Tibebu, Tiruwork B. & Hittinger, Eric & Miao, Qing & Williams, Eric, 2022. "Roles of diffusion patterns, technological progress, and environmental benefits in determining optimal renewable subsidies in the US," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    20. Rode, Johannes & Müller, Sven, 2016. "Spatio-Temporal Variation in Peer Effects - The Case of Rooftop Photovoltaic Systems in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 84765, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:74:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-019-00374-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.