Strike while the rebate is hot: Savvy consumers and strategic technology adoption timing

Abstract

The California Solar Initiative (CSI) rebate program disbursed more than two billion dollars in incentives to install solar photovoltaics (PV) over roughly a decade while “stepping-down” rebate levels as installed capacity goals were reached. The exact dates (i.e., timing) of the stepdown events were not known, yet recent analyses find evidence of an “announcement effect” wherein consumer adoption is “pulled-forward” across these stepdown events. We analyze unique data from our recent household-level survey on the decision-making process for 194 of these very consumers within a narrow window of eight CSI rebate stepdown events, comparing the decision-making processes of pulled-forward consumers to their counterparts that adopt just after a rebate stepdown.We find evidence that a subset of pre-stepdown adopters engage in more “savvy” decision-making behaviors from their post-stepdown counterparts, including strategic adoption timing. Given these behavioral differences, we conclude that future analyses should carefully consider aspects of individual decision-making processes as potential confounders and control for them if possible. Experience is identified as a potential pathway through which this non-negligible subset of adopters may gain the ability to execute savvy decision-making behaviors; future research should assess the degree to which policy implementation can explicitly leverage this pathway.