Community-led initiatives can play an important role in reducing the barriers to the adoption of energy-saving measures in homes. Quantitative insights about the role of communities and their leaders in energy transition are largely missing however. This paper exploits unique data on 78 community-led retrofitting campaigns run during 2014–2020 in the Netherlands, and studies econometrically the role of block leaders — the residents who managed the communities. Special focus lies on the analysis of the peer externalities that block leaders exerted on other community members. Contrary to much of the literature, peer externalities here are not driven by visibility and imitation, but by offering access to information and by cheap talk. The results show evidence of a spatial distance decay in peer effects, with the largest effect within 200 m of a block leader. Our insights suggest that communities should optimally spread out leaders geographically and select leaders whose dwellings are representative of the community’s existing building stock.

中文翻译：

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你听邻居的话吗？区块领导者在社区主导的能源改造中的作用

社区主导的举措可以在减少家庭采用节能措施的障碍方面发挥重要作用。然而，关于社区及其领导人在能源转型中的作用的定量见解在很大程度上缺失。本文利用了荷兰 2014 年至 2020 年期间开展的 78 个社区主导的改造活动的独特数据，并从计量经济学角度研究了街区领导者（管理社区的居民）的作用。特别关注的是对阻止领导者对其他社区成员施加的同伴外部性的分析。与许多文献相反，这里的同行外部性不是由可见性和模仿驱动的，而是由提供信息和廉价谈话驱动的。结果显示，同伴效应的空间距离衰减的证据，在距离区块领导者 200 m 内影响最大。我们的见解表明，社区应在地理位置上优化分散领导者，并选择其住宅能够代表社区现有建筑群的领导者。