Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Urban, Jan
• Ščasný, Milan

Titel

Exploring domestic energy-saving: The role of environmental concern and background variables

Ist Teil von

• Energy policy, 2012-08, Vol.47, p.69-80

Ort / Verlag

Kidlington: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

PAIS Index

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether residents' environmental concern has any effect on their energy-saving curtailments and efficiency investments. The novelty of the present work lies in the fact that it seeks to investigate this topic in a multi-country setting, exploiting data from nine OECD countries (Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Italy, South Korea, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden), and also in that it employs a latent variable model which allows us to examine the conditions necessary for the results to be comparable across different countries. Novel in this paper is also the focus on the role of environmental concern as a factor of several curtailments and efficiency investments. Our results suggest that people with higher environmental concern are on average more likely to perform energy-saving curtailments and also are more likely to have some energy-efficiency retrofits installed in dwellings. Most of the socio-economic and demographic variables have mixed effects on efficiency investments and curtailments. However, some interesting patterns emerged with respect to the age of respondents, household income, education and gender of respondents, and also the size of household. ► People with higher environmental concern are more likely to perform energy-saving curtailments. ► People with higher environmental concern are more likely to introduce some energy efficiency retrofits. ► Older people are more concerned about environmental problems, invest in efficiency and curtail more. ► Formal level of education does not play prominent role with respect to domestic energy-saving. ► Wealthier people are more likely to invest in energy efficiency but less likely to curtail.