Understanding mixed results for the impact of income on household solar-panel uptake is important for several reasons. Income is often a central feature of economic studies or a key control for social studies. Furthermore, policy makers are increasingly relying on income to determine solar-subsidy eligibility. We use a large sample of Australian households to suggest reasons for mixed results. For a comparative purpose, we show a negative relationship between income and solar-panel uptake for a regression with 318 observations, where these observations are area-aggregated averages of underlying household-level survey data. A similar model with 31,828 household observations from the same household-level survey data suggests a positive relationship. This gradually disappears when adding key controls. When assessing possible non-linearity, we find a negative association between income and solar-panel uptake at high-income levels. Interestingly, this is primarily true for higher-wealth households. Our analysis suggests an important shift in solar policies is needed – from a singular focus on income toward wealth or dual income-wealth thresholds.

由于几个原因，了解收入对家庭太阳能电池板吸收的影响的混合结果很重要。收入通常是经济研究的核心特征或社会研究的关键控制因素。此外，政策制定者越来越依赖收入来确定太阳能补贴的资格。我们使用大量澳大利亚家庭样本来提出混合结果的原因。出于比较目的，我们通过 318 个观测值的回归显示收入与太阳能电池板吸收之间的负相关关系，其中这些观测值是基础家庭调查数据的区域聚合平均值。来自同一家庭调查数据的 31,828 个家庭观察结果的类似模型表明存在正相关关系。添加关键控件时，这会逐渐消失。在评估可能的非线性时，我们发现高收入水平的收入与太阳能电池板的使用呈负相关。有趣的是，这主要适用于富裕家庭。我们的分析表明，太阳能政策需要进行重大转变——从单一关注收入转向财富或双重收入-财富门槛。