Structural and Financial Constraints Driving Residential Solar PV Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Austria

Residential solar photovoltaic systems play a key role in decentralized energy transitions. Despite declining technology costs and growing policy support, household adoption remains uneven and below technical potential. This paper investigates whether PV adoption is pri- marily driven by preferences and motivations or constrained by structural and economic feasibility. Using a representative survey of Austrian households, we compare adopters and non-adopters by examining structural housing conditions, socio-economic characteristics and environmental attitudes, as well as the co-adoption of complementary technologies, comple- mented by evidence on perceived motivations and barriers. The results show that adoption is strongly associated with structural feasibility and technology co-adoption. Higher income, single-family housing, and ownership of heat pumps and electric vehicles significantly increase adoption likelihood, while the effect of homeownership becomes statistically insignificant once income and other socio-economic factors are controlled for. Environmental awareness does not significantly predict adoption once structural factors are taken into account. Reported barriers among non-adopters closely mirror these patterns: financial constraints, building limitations, and administrative hurdles dominate. Overall, the findings suggest that structural and financial constraints play a more prominent role than preference-based factors in shaping residential PV adoption, highlighting the importance of addressing feasibility barriers in policy design. Policies should therefore prioritize reducing structural and financial constraints, particularly for households in multi-family housing.