Conservation Spillovers: The Effect of Rooftop Solar on Climate Change Beliefs

Biased beliefs about climate change may lead to under-regulation of emissions. We study a new channel by which the public form beliefs about climate change: visible mitigation actions. By exploiting the rapid growth of rooftop solar panels, a large survey, and differences in incentives to install solar, we find that visible mitigation actions have a positive impact on belief in basic climate science. However, we also find that higher solar...