Uncovering Context Effects in Decision-Making on Renewable Technologies Adoption: Examining the Potential of Discrete Choice Experiments

Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) allow the examination of individual preferences in decision-making processes in the context of products, services or policies. For this purpose, respondents are exposed to a series of choice sets that usually describe hypothetical product-, service- or policy alternatives that differ regarding attributes that are specific to the researched products, services or policies. In real life, however, decisions are made by taking the social context into consideration when reflecting on attributes specific to the products, services or policies.

In this study, we examine to what extent and how the social context can be modelled in discrete choice experiments. For this purpose, we draw on a Discrete Choice Experiment on the adoption of renewable technologies that was conducted in Germany in 2021. Participants were randomly assigned to different versions of the DCE, in which we varied the social context for the decision-making process.