 Rebound effectAntonino Marvuglia Chapter 132 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, 2026, pp 494-495 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: The “take-back”, “backfire”, or “rebound effect” can be defined as “the change in overall consumption and production due to the behavioral or other systemic response to changes in economic variables (income, price and financial gains or costs of product and material substitution) induced by a change in the technical efficiency of providing an energy service”. The origin of the concept can be traced back to the seminal works of the English economist William Stanley Jevons, which is the reason why the rebound effect is often recalled as the result of so-called “Jevon's Paradox”. In fact, in his book The Coal Question (1865), Jevons argued that efficiency gains related to the use of coal by engines lead to increased overall coal consumption rather than a decrease as conventional wisdom would suggest. An example of the direct rebound effect can be the increase in electricity use for lighting due to an increase in efficiency (and therefore the decrease in the cost of use) of the lighting bulbs (e.g. shift from incandescent bulbs to LED lights), which causes consumers to use artificial lighting less sparingly and therefore for a much longer time. Keywords: Javon’s paradox; Backfire effect; Take-back effect; Consumption; Efficiency; Price (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22215_132 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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