Two sets of roles emerge when couples consider installing solar panels on their house, a new study shows: in sync, when partners with shared goals and defined tasks end up adopting solar, and oppositional, marked by discord and not making the solar investment.
A second study showed that greater support from all members of a household - parents, kids, siblings, unrelated roommates - predicted eventual adoption of solar, but greater disagreement was also linked to a higher likelihood of installing rooftop panels.
Overall, the research suggests a champion for solar adoption in the house gets the family over the finish line. The champion is most positive about the technology, does the most work to plan the project and prompts ongoing discussion.
"This introduces an opportunity for policy and interventions because if we're targeting incentives or communication campaigns to a household or one member of a household, that's probably not enough. We need to figure out how to support these champions," said senior author Nicole Sintov, associate professor of behavior, decision making and sustainability at The Ohio State University.
"They're already shouldering the burden of trying to convince other people in their household to come along, and maybe it's generating conflict. What can we equip them with to help them with the process?"
Understanding these dynamics could help the planet by improving the adoption rate of residential solar by U.S. households, which currently stands at about 8%, Sintov said.
"There are all of these decarbonization technologies available, including rooftop solar and heat pumps, but if people don't adopt them, then what good are they?" she said. "So we focus on what motivates households to adopt these technologies and how we can design communications and programming to support that."
Sintov completed the work with first author Naseem Dillman-Hasso, a doctoral candidate in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State, and former Ohio State postdoctoral research associate Kristin Hurst, now an assistant professor at Southern Illinois University. The research is published today (July 9, 2026) in Nature Energy.
It's not necessarily surprising that a disruptive, expensive home project requires lots of conversation. There's plenty to consider, with primary barriers identified in the study including high upfront costs versus long-term payments, fear of structural damage, uncertainty about the effects on home value and resale opportunities, and distrust of solar companies.
What is surprising is that little thought has been given to the family dynamics underpinning these household discussions, Sintov said.
"Research to date tends to characterize these decisions as this monolithic household choice, but three-quarters of U.S. households have more than one person living in them. In this study, the lens was a large investment like solar panels - and they're not one-time decisions made by a single person in a multi-occupant household," she said.
The first study involved qualitative interviews with 39 couples. Seven had adopted solar, seven had considered solar but opted out, and 25 were still in the deliberation stage at the time of the interview.
While couples who were in sync were strongly associated with installing solar panels, that alone wasn't always enough. Interview results revealed that a time-sensitive catalyst event increased their sense of urgency to adopt. Catalysts ranged from skyrocketing energy bills and fears of frequent power loss to the looming reduction of a federal tax incentive.
The second study was an online survey of 394 household representatives, 268 who had begun lining up solar but ultimately didn't see it through, and 126 who had adopted rooftop solar.
In both adopter and lost customer households, the survey respondents described themselves as the most positive and active participants in the process - in other words, the champion. In adopter households, romantic partners and parents played larger roles in the conversations than in lost customer households.
The champion role was consistently linked with adoption, suggesting that coordination, active participation and deliberation by all household members can improve chances for installing solar. And even greater disagreement predicted adoption - indicating that any form of communication, even if it's negative, could be at play when a household makes movement toward the decision to adopt solar.
"That was surprising," Sintov said. "We don't know for sure why, but one hypothesis is that among adopters, there may be more to disagree about once you proceed with the adoption process - there's a lot going on, it's stressful, it's conflictual. Or it could just be that engaging in these conversations and being more engaged led to more disagreements."
Sintov is already applying some of the findings to her work with nonprofit organizations, building in-sync coordination skills in couples interested in adopting solar and developing worksheets that define goals and divvy the workload for families making changes after an energy efficiency audit.
Other options are workshops with household members to see if in-sync dynamics can be cultivated, and structured discussion guides that introduce unanticipated stumbling blocks and coax people toward an in-sync approach to addressing concerns.
"Targeting marketing messages and engagement and outreach to one member of a household or just a general household is liable to result in failure," Sintov said. "This is a relational process. At minimum, policy and other interventions can help facilitate the coordination process."
And though it wasn't a research goal, there is a decent chance that these dynamics influence lots of household decisions.
"I think what we've uncovered might be just a core dynamic of how households make decisions - this in-sync versus oppositional dynamic and the fact that sometimes there's a champion for a cause and the other person has to be dragged along," she said. "There's very real potential that this applies to a whole bunch of different household decision making, from installing a heat pump to getting a new couch to adopting a dog."
