LAUSR

Energy policies refer to the suite of governmental actions that address planning, generation, and consumption issues around items such as electricity, transportation, and efficiency. These decisions are sometimes politically contentious, given the complexities and interests from various sides of the stakeholder aisle. Governmental entities often enact various financial incentives, taxation strategies, conservation tactics, and many other policies to best develop solutions for society's energy and environmental future. However, these solutions sometimes require massive shocks to change the historic status quo and bring forth strategies for newer, sustainable energies that have lower environmental and social costs. Many schools of thought illustrate how key events are the stimuli for scientific change innovations toward alternative energy sources. Over the years, the public policy discipline has specifically developed a number of theories to better comprehend changes and these types of governmental decision making processes. Such theoretical frameworks include Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Kingdon's Multiple Streams Theory, Lindblom's Incrementalism, and Baumgartner and Jones' Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), among others. Downs' Issue‐ Attention Cycle concept is also relevant as a means to understand the public's attention to an issue and how that stimulates change. Generations of prior scholars have utilized these policy theories in both quantitative and qualitative research. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory, later termed by scholars as “policy diffusion,” is a widely used and relevant approach at framing energy and environmental policy change and adoption. This theory centers on how policies are replicated and spread (ie, best practices) over geographic areas (eg, US states). Rogers categorized different levels of innovation adopters as innovators, early adopters, early majority, later majority, and laggards. Such diffusion of innovation occurs over time, meaning that there are a number of aspects (eg, the media) that can speed or slow diffusion.