In 2009, West Virginia enacted an Alternative and Renewable Portfolio Act (APRA) to broaden its energy use for electricity beyond coal. A choice experiment survey was conducted to assess West Virginians’ willingness to pay (WTP) for 10 percent of electricity generated from wind energy versus natural gas. Results showed that residential consumers preferred electricity generated from wind, with annual per-capita WTP averaging from $19.25 to $26.75. Given the subsequent repeal of the APRA in 2015, we propose implementation of a voluntary green pricing program as an alternative policy to increase the share of renewable energy in West Virginia's energy portfolio.

Policy learning has been one of the primary mechanisms by which policy innovations are assumed to diffuse from one jurisdiction to another. Recent research suggests, however, that learning is more than simply observing policy adoption in other jurisdictions and must also include an assessment of the outcomes or effectiveness of those policies. This article argues that an assessment of the ability to implement an innovation is also likely to be a component of the learning process. Specifically, it argues that potential adopters are likely to ask not only, “Was the policy effective in other states that adopted it?” but also, “Can we make the policy work for us?” We test hypotheses drawn from this general argument in a directed dyad analysis of renewable portfolio standards in the American states between 1997 and 2009. Results indicate that shared implementation environments among jurisdictions help determine the impact that information about policy effectiveness has on adoption decisions. These findings suggest that implementation concerns may be an important part of the policy learning process.

It has long been recognised that interstate diffusion of policy innovations is comprised of distinct decisions including adoption, reinvention and amendment. Interstate influences are an important driver of these diffusion processes, but studies to date have not investigated the degree to which external influences vary across these decisions. We theorise that geographical peers will have the largest impact in adoption decisions; that ideological peers are an important source of policy information when states make decisions about “reinventing” innovations adopted by others; and that internal factors will drive the decision by a state to amend a policy. We test these expectations for renewable portfolio standards in the American states between 1996 and 2009. Results suggest that state policymakers emulate peers in adoption or policy design choices, and that internal influences have a stronger influence on amendment decisions than do external influences. These findings further our understanding of policy diffusion and state-by-state relations.