Enhancing Understanding of Geographical Adoption Patterns of Residential Rooftop Photovoltaic Using a Consumer Segmentation Model—A Case Study in Saxony, Germany

This paper addresses two issues in spatial research on residential PV adoption: First, spatial analyses typically do not differentiate between households who have decision power over their rooftop, and households who do not, possibly causing indistinct results. Second, household characteristics like environmental attitudes and innovativeness are not accounted for sufficiently, despite their proven relevance for adoption decisions. We performed a statistical analysis with an innovative spatial data set of Saxony (Germany) in which households of (semi-) detached houses were analyzed separated from the remainder, and household characteristics were included through the Sinus-milieu model. PV saturation in subgroups of the sample was compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. Results show that PV saturation is high in affluent zip-codes with high shares of (semi-) detached houses, and is higher in rural than in urban areas. The presence of environmentally concerned households (Post-Materialists) is positively, and the presence of innovative households (Leaders) is negatively associated with PV saturation. Our results show that household characteristics beyond socio-economic measures are relevant to understand differences in PV saturation in the Saxonian zip-codes. The merits of distinguishing between decisive households and the remainder are less clear.