Policy simulation for promoting residential PV considering anecdotal information exchanges based on social network modelling

Surveys and empirical researches have revealed that the households' perceptions of benefits play a more important role than the benefits themselves in the decision process of adopting residential photovoltaic (PV). However, it has been overlooked in previous models about the green technology diffusion. This work developed an innovation diffusion model based on a social network, which was integrated with an anecdotal information exchange process. The contributions were to model the households' evaluation, which changes with social influence, and analyze the impact of such dynamics on the adoption of residential PV. A case study was conducted for villages in Beijing. Different scenarios about policies have been considered concerning both the economic benefits and the information diffusion on social network. The results show that: (1) Providing insurance against the damage of PV to adopters for free can improve the adoption rate from 24% up to 62% (full insurance), and the new adopter acquisition cost is only 36% of that of providing additional subsidy; (2) The enhancement of communications (e.g. Bulletin Board System (BBS) and Social Networking Services (SNS)) creates an obstacle to the residential PV adoption when the majority of households have insufficient knowledge about the PV system; and (3) Information campaigns and information screening are both effective and necessary in mitigating the negative effect from the enhancement of communications at the initial stage of the residential PV market.