Evaluating gaps in knowledge, willingness and heating performance in individual preferences on household energy and climate policy: Evidence from the UK

Tahamina Khanam and David Reiner

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022, vol. 160, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates the knowledge-willingness, willingness-performance, and knowledge-performance gaps regarding reducing carbon dioxide emissions and emerging technologies of the 2137 British residents. Household's heating sources and heat settings are anticipated as key criteria for evaluating respondents' performances. The study revealed more than 80% of respondents have a good knowledge regarding climate change and carbon issues. The study found a smaller gap in knowledge versus willingness as 59%, 87%, 88% and 85% of respondents want to use bioenergy, afforestation/reforestation, solar and wind for their future energy sources. The Multinomial logit regression (MNLR) investigates that incrementing good and very good knowledge index increases the odds of a high willingness to save energy by 33% and 6%, respectively. The willingness versus performance study identified 96% as claiming to be more likely energy savers, whereas, in reality, 52% of them never or rarely took basic measures like setting their heating system to turn off. Despite having a good and very good knowledge index, the knowledge versus performance appears, 75% of respondents are using gas boilers and gas central heating. Policymakers and the research community need to develop comprehensive plans by taking these wider social issues to meet net-zero targets. Employing smart building principles, lowering the installation costs of the new smart technologies, awarding and encouraging the energy saver, setting individual carbon footprint limits, and training and empowering household representatives to select better energy for houses could popularise the emission reduction technologies in the UK.

Keywords: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology; bioenergy CCS; gas CCS; Climate change; Solar energy; Wind energy; Knowledge index; Willingness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122001526
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:160:y:2022:i:c:s1364032122001526

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112229

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().