Policy design amid unexpected socioeconomic drivers of household cleantech investments

This paper shows how behavioural data helps to explain mixed results for the link between income and household cleantech investments. Using data from Energy Consumers Australia, our main research focus is on factors influencing household investments such as home batteries and electric vehicles (EVs). We find that the behaviour of solar-panel investment is informative for understanding adoption of other energy investments. We include interactions between solar-panel adoption and socioeconomic variables such as income group. Income and other socioeconomic factors affect solar and non-solar households in opposite ways. For example, an apparently negative influence of income on adoption of batteries and electric vehicles for non-solar households turns positive for households with solar panels. We explain this as solar-panel investment behaviour helping to isolate resource constraints from other correlated constraints. We find that socioeconomic constraints substantially limit household cleantech investments, highlighting the need for policies that explicitly address these constraints. Following our results, policymakers can have more confidence in the need for means testing, such as through reference to financial contexts (e.g. assets). In addition, policymakers can also consider differing policy support for batteries and electric vehicles according to whether households already have solar panels.