Factors associated with the adoption of renewable energy amongst botanical garden members

Abstract

We examine the factors related to the adoption of renewable energy amongst members of a botanical garden. We surveyed botanical garden members roughly seven months after the garden began incentivizing visitors to switch their household energy supplier to a renewable energy provider, offering a free year of membership to those who switched to renewable energy on site. We examine two related research questions: what factors are related to a) already having one’s household run on renewable energy at the time the incentive was put into place and b) switching to renewable energy on site? We find that politically liberal participants were more likely to already use renewable energy, and that younger participants and those who had a pleasant on-site interaction with the renewable energy supplier were more likely to switch to renewable energy on site. We discuss the implications of our findings for encouraging uptake of renewables.