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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1403647

Democrats and Republicans choose solar panels in very similar ways

Provisionally accepted
Nathanael Johnson Nathanael Johnson *Torsten Reimer Torsten Reimer
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Appealing to individuals' social identity is a powerful form of social influence, capable of changing the way people process information, the information they think about, and how they evaluate other individuals. The purpose of this study is to explore the idea that Democrat and Republican environmental norms may impact the attributes and strategies partisans use when choosing whether to have solar panels on a house. An online study with N = 363 participants was conducted to examine these possible effects through multi-attribute decision making, applying predefined decision process models to participant behavior to test which attribute-based models best describe participants' decision making. A choice task was combined with an experimental manipulation of political affiliation salience to examine whether the norms of political groups would have influence on decision behavior. Results of the study show remarkable similarities between political parties in their strategies for choosing solar panels. Members of both political parties appeared to use similar strategies and similar attributes for the formation of their decisions. Recommendations are made that science communicators and policy makers avoid polarizing language so as not to create unnecessary polarization where ideological gaps may not currently exist.

    Keywords: Social identity, Solar Panels, Technology Adoption, Multi-attribute decision modeling, Political identity

    Received: 22 Mar 2024; Accepted: 04 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Johnson and Reimer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Nathanael Johnson, Purdue University, West Lafayette, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.