Impacts of neighbourhood influence on social acceptance of small solar home systems in rural western Kenya

Abstract

Knowledge of a new technology is necessary for a consumer to make an informed decision on its adoption, but this is difficult with nascent technologies such as solar home systems (SHS) where information is asymmetrical, with producers being in better positions to test the technology than consumers, contributing to their initial slow diffusions in new markets. In such cases, neighbourhood influence from early and independent adopters play important roles in increased future adoptions. In this work, impacts of neighbourhood influence and social pressure on temporal diffusion of SHS in a rural developing community are investigated. A survey is developed and carried out in Kendu Bay area of Kenya to gather information on how neighbourhood influence and social pressure impact on SHS installation decisions. Data from the survey is then used to inform an agent-based model (ABM) developed in NetLogo, to simulate impacts of neighbourhood influence radius and threshold, on temporal diffusion of SHS in a rural developing community. Results show that visibility of newly installed SHS leads to more installations that word-of-mouth alone. Results also show that increasing influence radius leads to exponential growth in SHS installations. For optimal SHS installations, a neighbourhood threshold of between 12.5% and 15% is required.