PANDORA - An Agent-Based-Model to Analyze Acceptability of (Energy) Policies, Applied to the German Heating Sector

Simulation or optimization models that project developments given specific policy scenarios are important tools to assess the efficacy of policy instruments. Those models typically assume a certain policy be implemented, and examine its effectiveness regarding the behavioural change achieved in the targeted population and the resulting impacts on the development of economic and environmental indicators. However, the adoption of a desired behaviour in a population is to a significant extent moderated by the collective acceptance of the policy measures put into effect. An integration of the process of public policy acceptance would not only improve the accuracy and stability of techno-economic model outputs, but also help to identify policy properties corresponding with societal preferences and guide improved policy design. Still, the formation of public policy acceptance is complex in nature because it is driven by heterogeneity in the target population of the policy measure and governed by social dynamics. In this paper, we present the agent-based model PANDORA (Policy AcceptaNce, Diffusion of Opinions and Relations among Actors) that represents the process of acceptance among a network of actors in face of an introduced policy measure in the heating sector. The transition of the heating sector is particularly challenging because its success critically depends on coordinated investments of heterogeneous building owners in heating technologies and insulation. Therefore, a comparative assessment of the acceptance of policy measures aiming to stimulate the decentralised investment flow is an important building block of policy formation. The presented model draws on theory on policy acceptance, theory on opinion dynamics and on empirical data obtained from a survey in Germany.