Informal institutions matter: Professional culture and the development of biogas technology

• We analyze the relevance of institutional structures for technological diffusion.
• We highlight the importance of informal institutions.
• Biogas development in Austria shows substantial differences on the regional level.
• Different professional cultures play a major role in the implementation of biogas.
• Systematic analysis of a technology's institutional environment is important.

Institutions play a crucial role for the development and diffusion of novel technologies. Many studies have analyzed the role of formal institutions such as support policies or specific R&D programs, while informal institutions have received less attention. With this paper, we contribute to the institutional analysis of emerging technological fields as we examine how the effects of formal institutions depend on informal institutional structures. We present findings from a comparative study of biogas technology in selected Austrian regions. Our findings suggest that the professional culture in which farmers are embedded modulates the effects of feed-in tariffs and investment subsidies to a considerable extent. This explains regional differences in the diffusion as well as variations in the design and operation of biogas plants. We argue that studies on emerging technologies benefit from a systematic analysis of the interplay of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive institutions. We also argue that socio-technical variation is an important indicator to look at in addition to diffusion rates.