Self- and Social Signaling: Evidence from Solar Adoption in California

Prosocial behavior plays a role in many economic contexts, and it has been explained by altruism, social pressure, signaling, and expectations of fairness and reciprocity.We examine prosocial behavior in a context that allows us to distinguish the role of self-signaling and social signaling from alternative explanations, including warm glow.Our context is residential solar, and selfsignaling is separately identified from social signaling by the exogenous visibility of potential solar arrays.We show that the political affiliation of proximate peers influences the extent of selfsignaling and is crowded out by the private benefits of installing solar.