Social norms within caste groups

The paper shows that social norms and peer effects within caste groups strongly influence whether households adopt cooling technologies, especially air conditioning. Households tend to align their behaviour with what is common in their own caste and district: when air-conditioner ownership among same-caste neighbours crosses a high threshold, individual adoption probabilities rise sharply, indicating that modern cooling can function as a visible, status-linked good that people copy to conform to group expectations.