The Epistemic Dimension in Innovation Diffusion and Fair Policy Making

While many green technologies have clear environmental advantages, individual resistance and societal inertia can slow down their widespread adoption. Overcoming these barriers requires combining governmental incentives with social structures that promote diffusion through imitation. However, discrimination based on social identity can hinder this process. By formalizing the epistemic properties of a social environment through individual credibility and reliability, along with the concept of epistemic fairness, we analyze the impact of epistemic unfairness on innovation diffusion in open-loop and closed-loop scenarios. Our findings underscore the influence of epistemic factors on adoption dynamics and fair policy design, offering insights into solutions for a fairer dissemination of sustainable technologies.