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Zhen et al. Carbon Footprints 2024;3:7 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cf.2023.50 Page 11 of 17

In the absence of additional government subsidies, most families have difficulty in recovering costs within a
predetermined period.

Factors affecting photovoltaic installation for rural households
Given the above findings, we have identified several obstacles to the policy promotion of rural household
photovoltaic installation. However, we must consider other factors associated with the installation of such
systems and quantify their impact. Understanding these factors will enrich our knowledge of the current
advancement of distributed photovoltaics in rural China, thus paving the way for further policy measures
and reduction of the carbon footprint of rural households.

This paper integrates household and village-level variables in the Logit model. Table 3 presents the logit
regression with Install as an explained variable. The first column presents the logit regression of Install on
family level characteristics; the second column presents the logit regression of Install on village level
characteristics; the third column includes all family and village level explanatory variables; the fourth
column further uses heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors based on the third column. To present a
more intuitive understanding of the influence of different factors, we list the odds ratio and corresponding
confidence interval estimations of different variables in the final column.

Household-level factors
At the household level, the factors that significantly influence the installation of photovoltaics in rural
households are the experience of extreme weather and participation in other low-carbon environmental
policies. This suggests that even though household photovoltaic systems can help people to be more
resilient to extreme weather to some extent, they do not appear to do so based on the results of the survey of
households in Shandong Province, where households that have experienced extreme weather leading to
electricity problems are more reluctant to install photovoltaic systems than those that have not
experienced extreme weather, with installation rates of only 9% (β = -2.392, odds ratio = 0.09, P < 0.01). This
also poses challenges for installing photovoltaic equipment and adapting rural households to extreme
weather conditions [40,41] . Households that had participated in policies such as coal-to-gas and coal-to-
electricity conversions showed a higher motivation to install photovoltaic equipment, with a 20.17 times
higher installation ratio compared to households with no experience in low-carbon policy participation
(β = 3.004, odds ratio = 20.17, P < 0.001). It suggests that existing energy retrofit policies have spillover
effects on future local low-carbon transitions in addition to the critical role they already play and that high
[42]
levels of public policy engagement can drive community-wide energy transitions .

However, our study reveals that household income and social norms are not significant factors in installing
photovoltaic equipment, which diverges from the conclusions of previous studies [20,43] . The face-to-face
household surveys conducted in our research appear to provide new insights that contrast with the existing
literature. As two villagers told us:

“As you can see in our village, rich families do not want to install, and the poor have no money to afford this
equipment and dare not install it. If the good things are already rolled out, it is not our turn.” (Interview ID:
20230206SDJN0108)

“Many households in our village have installed, but some enjoy the minimum living guarantee, so when the
village cadres told them to install this, they soon agreed. However, if you want a family like mine to do it, I
don't necessarily want even if all others have installed (such systems).” (Interview ID: 20230214SDRZ0105)