Modelling the Determinants of Rooftop Solar PV adoption among Urban Households in Ghana

Abstract

The increasing calls for sustainable production and consumption of energy have led to a surge in the drive of governments across the world to invest in promoting the uptake of such technologies. Rooftop Solar PV systems have therefore gained prominence in the energy transformation discourse of many countries. Evidence-based models are therefore significant for the design of policy interventions to promote sustainable adoption. This study, therefore, examines through a cross-sectional survey, the determinants of rooftop Solar PV technology adoption in Ghana, from the perspectives of households to provide evidence useful for explaining their behaviour, and consequently inform policy. A total of 596 urban households were surveyed using a set of pre-tested structured questionnaire in three principal cities: Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale. Binary and Multinomial logistic regression analyses were used in determining the attributes of the households that are statistically significant in explaining their adoption behaviour, as well as investigating the heterogeneity of the adoption behaviour across the diverse socio-economic attributes of the respondents. Both models were taken to be statistically significant at p<0.05. The results showed that five attributes of the households were significant across a total of six levels in predicting the likelihood of adoption among the respondents: awareness of the existence of a rooftop programme (coefficient=4.66); household size (coefficient=0.23); landlord tenancy status (coefficient=1.35); rent-free occupancy tenancy status (coefficient=0.83); tertiary level of education (coefficient=1.22); and electricity expenditure (coefficient=-0.0007). The nature of interactions was thus used to specify a linear predictor model for the adoption behaviour of the households. A statistically significant variation in adoption behaviour was observed across two main variables: awareness and tenancy statuses of respondents. The study recommends among others that further comprehensive surveys be conducted by the country’s Energy Commission to establish causality evidence in the adoption behaviour of households to contribute towards refining existing policy models and increase their likelihood of success in facilitating the sustainable uptake of the technology. Further, policy interventions should target landlords and property developers, while current efforts should be geared towards robust models for financing and awareness creation to stimulate the uptake among households