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

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.