The effect of place of living on social acceptance of shared PV projects in Switzerland

In Switzerland, solar power has the greatest potential to further advance the energy transition. As conventional rooftop PV excludes a large share of citizens from personally contributing to climate change mitigation, shared PV (photovoltaics) projects offer a more inclusive alternative, e.g. also for urban residents who are less likely to have the option to install solar panels on their own roof. Thus, investigating people’s preferences depending on the degree of urbanity of their place of residence is crucial to determine socially acceptable PV project designs. Using original Swiss survey data ( N = 3000) and applying conjoint analysis, different preferences both depending on respondents’ place of living as well as for different dimensions of social acceptance are found. Most notably, big city residents are generally most in favour of such projects but they exhibit the lowest willingness to actually invest. The conjoint experiment showed that, regarding the DVs of project rating and project choice, only the reimbursement by credit vouchers significantly improved project acceptance for big city residents. This also holds true for rural residents, where, in addition, tax deductions (reimbursement), traffic infrastructure, large consumer roofs (location) and electricity provider were also positively evaluated. For the DV specifying the amount of PV modules bought, no project attribute level managed to significantly increase this number, for which only investment-reducing factors were identified: Residents from big cities invest less when a PV project is located in a skiing area or when the investment is made at an information event. For rural residents, large consumer roofs as a location decrease the scale of an investment. These factors should therefore be avoided when planning a shared PV project in order to maximise investments. Fulfilling respective preferences (i.e. according to projects’ place-based target group) may prove relevant to enhance social acceptance of shared PV projects.