Design for context: how micro-level residential contexts shape solar policy outcomes

Designing solar policies that effectively enable households to adopt rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems remains a persistent challenge. Policy design scholarship explains household solar adoption through the alignment between policy instruments and target population attributes but pays limited attention to the residential contexts that enable or constrain households’ capacity to respond to solar policies. This study examines how parcel-level residential contexts shape households’ ability to adopt rooftop solar PV. Using data from Tallahassee, Florida, where residents share the same solar policies and citywide conditions, the analysis isolates the effects of intra-city variations in physical (e.g. tree density, roof condition, and housing density), socioeconomic (e.g. housing value, housing age, and renter composition), and regulatory (e.g. homeowner associations) contexts. Employing Firth logistic regression and hotspot analysis, the results show that physical and socioeconomic contextual factors are significantly associated with households’ adoption decisions and reveal a pronounced spatial variation in adoption potential across neighborhoods. The findings contribute to policy design scholarship by conceptualizing contextual variation as a diagnostic input to policy design, highlighting the importance of contextual fit. This study also suggests expanding the policy portfolio toward context-sensitive solar strategies that may better align policy tools with heterogeneous residential contexts.