Message framing to promote solar panels

Green technologies, such as solar panels, foster the use of clean energy, yet often involve large-scale investments. Hence, adoption by retail consumers has been a key barrier. Here, we show that message framing can significantly increase customers' serious commitment to adopting solar panels by providing empirical evidence in the field from a large-scale randomized controlled trial with a nationwide online retailer in the Netherlands (N = 26,873 participants). We design four messages aimed at promoting the purchase behavior of solar panel installations. Our messages present outcomes for oneself or for the environment and highlight cost savings versus earnings (for oneself) or reducing emissions versus generating green electricity (for the environment). Across all messages, we observe a higher rate of customers committing to solar panels compared to the baseline. However, the framing in terms of financial savings for oneself was by far the most effective, resulting in a 40% higher level of commitment than the baseline and 30% higher than the average of the other three messages, which were not significantly different in effect from each other. Our results show that message framing is cost-efficient and scalable among retail consumers to promote large-scale investments in green technologies and thus clean energy. Green technologies foster the use of green energy; however, large investment costs hinder adoption. In a large-scale field experiment, the authors show that message framing can promote a serious commitment to solar panels among the broader public.

Automated summary

The study shows that message framing can promote serious commitment to green technologies among retail consumers, thereby promoting the use of clean energy.