Exploring the co-adoption of low-carbon solutions: A household segmentation approach

Households are key actors of the climate transition, yet their uptake of Low Carbon Solutions (LCS) remains slow. Because households' decisions to adopt LCSs often influence one another, understanding their co-adoption is essential for identifying realistic household decarbonisation pathways. While extensive research has examined the determinants of single LCS adoption, much less is known about their co-adoption —e.g. adoption of multiple behaviours and technologies. This study maps co-adoption patterns for six major LCS targeting housing- and mobility-related emissions— high thermal performance, heat pumps, district heating, electric cars, electric bicycles, and private car absence—using a representative, spatially explicit survey from the Lausanne region, Switzerland. For each household, we model the adoption stage of every LCS as “unlikely adopter,” “likely adopter,” or “adopter,” and then apply cluster analysis. Six co-adoption profiles emerge, revealing considerable heterogeneity in how solutions are combined. High thermal performance consistently appears as a pivotal technology highly correlated to the uptake of other LCS. The co-adoption profiles also highlight the influence of household characteristics—such as age, income, and tenure—along with social norms and public infrastructure on adoption. However, overall LCS adoption is low: most households have adopted no LCS aside from giving up a private car. These findings indicate that uniform, “one-size-fits-all” policies are unlikely to achieve substantial uptake. Targeted measures that reinforce existing co-adoption dynamics, trigger new adoption patterns, while ensuring equitable urban transitions are advised, as they could enhance the effectiveness of household-driven climate action.