Empower the consumer! Energy-related financial literacy and its socioeconomic determinants

Julia Blasch, Nina Boogen, Claudio Daminato () and Massimo Filippini
Additional contact information
Claudio Daminato: ETH Zurich, Switzerland

No 18/289, CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

Abstract: To be aware of the potential for energy savings in their homes, individuals need specific energy-related and financial knowledge. In addition, they also need the cognitive skills to apply this knowledge, for example when it comes to the calculation of the lifetime cost of household appliances or energy-efficient renovations. This set of knowledge and skills is related to two literacy concepts, i.e. energy and financial literacy. In this paper, we propose a new concept of literacy that we call “energy-related financial literacy”. Further, we present information on the level of financial literacy as well as on the level of energy-related financial literacy for a sample of European households. In the empirical part of the paper we estimate several ordered probit models in order to analyse the determinants of the level of energy-related financial literacy, with a particular interest to understanding the role of gender. Our results show that the level of energy-related financial literacy is relatively low and heterogeneous across the European countries. Moreover, the results confirm previous findings about the gender gap in financial literacy, with males being associated with higher levels of the index. We also identify such a gender gap for energy-related financial literacy.

Keywords: Energy literacy; financial literacy; energy-related financial literacy; consumer awareness; energy knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D91 Q40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-eur and nep-fle
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cer.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-in ... papers/WP-18-289.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not found UA (http://www.cer.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-18-289.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.cer.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-18-289.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://cer.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-18-289.pdf)

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:eth:wpswif:18-289

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().