The impact of attribute preferences on adoption timing: The case of photo‐voltaic (PV) solar cells for household electricity generation

We are concerned with micro‐generation, individual households generating electricity using a renewable technology. We focus on modeling the adoption probability of photo‐voltaic solar panels by households. Using data from Ontario, Canada where a generous feed‐in‐tariff is available to households generating electricity from solar panels, we measure household level preferences for panels and use these preferences along with household characteristics to predict adoption time intentions. We use discrete choice experiments to measure household level preferences and establish a causal link between the attributes of the technology and adoption time intentions using discrete time survival mixture analysis. Significant preferences included lower cost, greater energy savings and lower fossil fuel inflation. The conditional (hazard) probability of adoption at a particular time given no previous adoption showed that the attribute preferences had intuitively reasonable effects. The hazard probabilities allow us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over a 10‐year period per household. Technology awareness has a significant effect on the adoption probability, reinforcing the need for effective education. Our approach indicates the level of heterogeneity in preferences, particularly high for investment criteria and CO2 emissions. These findings suggest that education campaigns should explain more about investment criteria, feed‐in tariffs and environmental effects.