IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/netspa/v18y2018i3d10.1007_s11067-018-9416-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are ‘Water Smart Landscapes’ Contagious? An Epidemic Approach on Networks to Study Peer Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Christa Brelsford

    (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

  • Caterina Bacco

    (Santa Fe Institute)

Abstract

We test the existence of a neighborhood based peer effect around participation in an incentive based conservation program called ‘Water Smart Landscapes’ (WSL) in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. We use 15 years of geo-coded daily records of WSL program applications and approvals compiled by the Southern Nevada Water Authority and Clark County Tax Assessors rolls for home characteristics. We use this data to test whether a spatially mediated peer effect can be observed in WSL participation likelihood at the household level. We show that epidemic spreading models provide more flexibility in modeling assumptions, and also provide one mechanism for addressing problems associated with correlated unobservables than hazards models which can also be applied to address the same questions. We build networks of neighborhood based peers for 16 randomly selected neighborhoods in Las Vegas and test for the existence of a peer based influence on WSL participation by using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered epidemic spreading model (SEIR), in which a home can become infected via autoinfection or through contagion from its infected neighbors. We show that this type of epidemic model can be directly recast to an additive-multiplicative hazard model, but not to purely multiplicative one. Using both inference and prediction approaches we find evidence of peer effects in several Las Vegas neighborhoods.

Suggested Citation

  • Christa Brelsford & Caterina Bacco, 2018. "Are ‘Water Smart Landscapes’ Contagious? An Epidemic Approach on Networks to Study Peer Effects," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 577-613, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:netspa:v:18:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11067-018-9416-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11067-018-9416-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11067-018-9416-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11067-018-9416-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angrist, Joshua D., 2014. "The perils of peer effects," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 98-108.
    2. Brock, William A. & Durlauf, Steven N., 2001. "Interactions-based models," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 54, pages 3297-3380, Elsevier.
    3. César Ducruet & Laurent Beauguitte, 2014. "Network science and spatial science : Review and outcomes of a complex relationship," Post-Print hal-03246947, HAL.
    4. Raghuram Iyengar & Christophe Van den Bulte & Thomas W. Valente, 2011. "Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 195-212, 03-04.
    5. Meyer, Sebastian & Held, Leonhard & Höhle, Michael, 2017. "Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Epidemic Phenomena Using the R Package surveillance," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 77(i11).
    6. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    7. Laura-Lucia Richter, 2013. "Social Effects in the Diffusion of solar Photovoltaic Technology in the UK," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1357, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    8. Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2006. "Empirics of the Identification of Social Interactions; An Evaluation of the Approaches and Their Results," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 193-228, April.
    9. Andrea Baranzini, Stefano Carattini, Martin Peclat, 2017. "What drives social contagion in the adoption of solar photovoltaic technology," GRI Working Papers 270, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    10. Brelsford, Christa & Abbott, Joshua K., 2017. "Growing into Water Conservation? Decomposing the Drivers of Reduced Water Consumption in Las Vegas, NV," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 99-110.
    11. Laura-Lucia Richter, 2013. "Social Effects in the Diffusion of Solar Photovoltaic Technology in the UK," Working Papers EPRG 1332, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    12. Bryan Bollinger & Kenneth Gillingham, 2012. "Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar Photovoltaic Panels," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 900-912, November.
    13. Charles Towe & Chad Lawley, 2013. "The Contagion Effect of Neighboring Foreclosures," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 313-335, May.
    14. Charles F. Manski, 2000. "Economic Analysis of Social Interactions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 115-136, Summer.
    15. César Ducruet & Laurent Beauguitte, 2014. "Spatial Science and Network Science: Review and Outcomes of a Complex Relationship," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 297-316, December.
    16. Christa Brelsford & Joshua K. Abbott, 2018. "How Smart Are `Water Smart Landscapes'?," Papers 1803.04593, arXiv.org.
    17. Thomas H. Scheike & Mei‐Jie Zhang, 2002. "An Additive–Multiplicative Cox–Aalen Regression Model," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 29(1), pages 75-88, March.
    18. Marcello Graziano & Kenneth Gillingham, 2015. "Spatial patterns of solar photovoltaic system adoption: The influence of neighbors and the built environment," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(4), pages 815-839.
    19. Chris Ryan, 2017. "Measurement of Peer Effects," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 50(1), pages 121-129, March.
    20. H. Peyton Young, 2009. "Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations: Contagion, Social Influence, and Social Learning," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1899-1924, December.
    21. Cosma Rohilla Shalizi & Andrew C. Thomas, 2011. "Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 40(2), pages 211-239, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel A. Brent & Joseph H. Cook & Allison Lassiter, 2022. "The Effects of Eligibility and Voluntary Participation on the Distribution of Benefits in Environmental Programs: An Application to Green Stormwater Infrastructure," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 98(4), pages 579-598.
    2. Ben Derudder & Zachary Neal, 2018. "Uncovering Links Between Urban Studies and Network Science," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 441-446, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christa Brelsford & Caterina De Bacco, 2018. "Are `Water Smart Landscapes' Contagious? An epidemic approach on networks to study peer effects," Papers 1801.10516, arXiv.org.
    2. Irwin, Nicholas B., 2021. "Sunny days: Spatial spillovers in photovoltaic system adoptions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    3. Carattini, Stefano & Gillingham, Kenneth & Meng, Xiangyu & Yoeli, Erez, 2024. "Peer-to-peer solar and social rewards: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 340-370.
    4. Rode, Johannes & Müller, Sven, 2016. "Spatio-Temporal Variation in Peer Effects - The Case of Rooftop Photovoltaic Systems in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 84765, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Moon-Hyun Kim & Tae-Hyoung Tommy Gim, 2021. "Spatial Characteristics of the Diffusion of Residential Solar Photovoltaics in Urban Areas: A Case of Seoul, South Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-16, January.
    6. Srinivasan, Suchita & Carattini, Stefano, 2020. "Adding fuel to fire? Social spillovers in the adoption of LPG in India," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    7. Jianhua Zhang & Xiaolong Liu & Dimitris Ballas, 2023. "Spatial and relational peer effects on environmental behavioral imitation," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 25(4), pages 575-599, October.
    8. Balta-Ozkan, Nazmiye & Yildirim, Julide & Connor, Peter M. & Truckell, Ian & Hart, Phil, 2021. "Energy transition at local level: Analyzing the role of peer effects and socio-economic factors on UK solar photovoltaic deployment," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 148(PB).
    9. W. Ben McCartney & Avni Shah, 2021. "Household Mortgage Refinancing Decisions Are Neighbor Influenced," Working Papers 21-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    10. Sampson, Gabriel & Perry, Edward & Hendricks, Nathan P., 2017. "The Role of Peer Effects in Resource Extraction - The Case of Kansas Groundwater," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258286, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Müller, Jonas & Trutnevyte, Evelina, 2020. "Spatial projections of solar PV installations at subnational level: Accuracy testing of regression models," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    12. Gerardo Pérez‐Cavazos, 2019. "Consequences of Debt Forgiveness: Strategic Default Contagion and Lender Learning," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 797-841, June.
    13. Gabriel S. Sampson & Edward D. Perry, 2019. "Peer effects in the diffusion of water‐saving agricultural technologies," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 50(6), pages 693-706, November.
    14. Wen, Hong-xing & Wang, Chan & Nie, Pu-yan, 2021. "Acceleration of rural households’ conversion to cleaner cooking fuels: The importance and mechanisms of peer effects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    15. Zhengqing Zhou & Xinchen Li & Zhanjia Zhang, 2023. "The Peer Effect in Promoting Physical Activity among Adolescents: Evidence from the China Education Panel Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-11, January.
    16. Suchita Srinivasan & Stefano Carattini, 2016. "Adding fuel to fire? Social spillovers and spatial disparities in the adoption of LPG in India," CIES Research Paper series 48-2016, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    17. Rieck, Karsten Marshall Elseth & Vaage, Kjell, 2012. "Social Interactions At The Workplace: Exploring Sickness Absence Behavior," Working Papers in Economics 11/12, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    18. Gioia De Melo, 2011. "Peer effects identified through social networks. Evidence from Uruguayan schools," Department of Economics University of Siena 627, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    19. Semih Tumen & Tugba Zeydanli, 2016. "Social interactions in job satisfaction," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 37(3), pages 426-455, June.
    20. Martín-Román, Ángel & Moral, Alfonso & Martínez-Matute, Marta, 2015. "Peer effects in judicial decisions: Evidence from Spanish labour courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 20-37.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:netspa:v:18:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11067-018-9416-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.