Green electricity product menu design for retailers without knowing consumer environmental awareness

Yanni Jiang, Debin Fang and Leyao Lei

Energy Economics, 2024, vol. 139, issue C

Abstract: Adverse selection problem due to asymmetry of consumer environmental awareness (CEA) could reduce electricity retailer's profit and obstructs renewable energy (RE) consumption. This study analyzes mechanism design problem of retailer constricted by RE consumption quota to incentive consumers display true CEA in competitive retail market. Based on principal-agent theory, we develop an extended principal-agent model with the addition of an RE consumption quota constraint to design a green electricity product menu which includes the green level, the price and electric quantity. Influence of information symmetry and quota setting on product attributes, retailer's profit, consumer utility, RE consumption is analyzed, and results show that: (1) Compare to symmetric information, under asymmetric information, green level of product provided to consumers with CEA (denoted as C1) distorts upward, information rent is greater than zero when quota is large, while green level of product provided to consumers without CEA (denoted as C2) distorts downward, with no information rent. (2) Under asymmetric information, unit environmental premium (UEP) of green electricity positively relates to proportion of C1, CEA level, and incremental WTP, and reaches the maximum value at a certain quota. (3) Under asymmetric information, retailer's profit and RE consumption positively relates to proportion of C1, and CEA level. (4) Under asymmetric information, quota difference could contribute to improve retail service quality under competitive retail market, and RE consumption elevation.

Keywords: Green electricity product; Consumer environmental awareness; Adverse selection; Information asymmetry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:139:y:2024:i:c:s0140988324006364

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2024.107928

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