Technological diffusion and preference learning in the world of Homo sustinens: The challenges for politics

•A Lotka-Volterra competition model is combined with a model of cultural learning.•Preference learning overcomes a technology's cost disadvantage leading to diffusion.•Timing of information provision via cultural model crucial in promoting technologies•Niche creation for a technology decreases its cost disadvantages enabling diffusion.•Policy combining social learning and incentives effective in promoting technologies

This article relates agents' learning of a preference for a technology, competition of technologies, and their relative diffusion among potential adopters. Competitive interactions between two technologies are captured by an extended Lotka-Volterra model. To also incorporate preference learning on the part of potential adopters of these technologies, we combine it with a model of cultural learning based on role model, conformist, and hedonistic learning. Our theoretical analysis is illustrated by a concrete example: the competition between electric mobility and conventional forms of individual mobility. The model enables an evaluation of specific policy instruments as to the promotion of sustainable technology.