The Rebound Effect in Air Conditioner Usage: An Empirical Analysis of Japanese Individuals' Behaviors

Minoru Morita, Kazuyuki Iwata and Toshi Arimura
Additional contact information
Minoru Morita: Faculty of Regional Policy, Takasaki City University of Economics, 1300 Kaminamie-machi Takasaki-city, Gunnma 3700801, Japan
Kazuyuki Iwata: Faculty of Economics, Matsuyama University, Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan.

RIEEM Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University

Abstract: Many studies have empirically examined to what extent energy efficiency improvement causes rebound effects for various products. Energy efficiency improvement potentially induces behavioral changes resulting in a rebound effect. However, a limited number of studies have addressed what kind of behavioral changes the energy efficiency improvement of appliances can cause. For example, the energy efficiency improvement of air conditioners can induce a change in the room temperature setting. This paper examines whether the energy efficiency improvement of air conditioners impedes energy-saving behaviors. Specifically, using a Japanese household survey, we examined the energy-saving behaviors related to air conditioner usage: 1) setting the room temperature at 28℃ or higher in summer, 2) reducing unnecessary power consumption and 3) cleaning the filters. We found that energy efficiency improvements reduce the probability of the behavior of setting air conditioner temperatures at 28℃ or more by approximately 25–45% during summer, while they have no impacts on the reduction of unnecessary air conditioner usage or filter cleaning. This finding implies that energy efficiency improvements may counteract the energy-saving behaviors of the temperature setting, resulting in a rebound effect. Thus, we clarified a mechanism of the rebound effect in the case of air conditioners.

Keywords: Energy Saving Behavior; Rebound Effects; Energy Air Conditioner (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q41 Q48 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.waseda.jp/prj-rieem/dp/dp2102.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The rebound effect in air conditioner usage: an empirical analysis of Japanese individuals’ behaviors (2022)
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:was:dpaper:2102

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RIEEM Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Takuro Miyamoto ().