Policy implications of the purchasing intentions towards energy-efficient appliances among China’s urban residents: Do subsidies work?

Zhaohua Wang, Xiaomeng Wang and Dongxue Guo
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Zhao-Hua Wang ()

Energy Policy, 2017, vol. 102, issue C, 430-439

Abstract: Incentive policies are always used to sway purchase, retail stocking, and production decisions toward energy-efficient products by many countries or regions. So the effectiveness of such subsidies has been of much concern to scholars. This research focused on whether, or not, subsidy policies have guided people's intentions and behaviours. We investigated 436 urban residents from 22 provinces in China, covering the seven major geographic regions, and made an empirical analysis of the factors influencing Chinese urban residents’ purchasing intentions towards energy-efficient appliances based on the structural equation model. On theoretical aspect, we developed the theory of planned behaviour. Our results show that the variable “POLICY” is insignificant which indicates that policy environment and media propaganda in China do not have significant effect on Chinese residents’ willingness to pay for energy-efficient appliances. While, the residents’ environmental awareness, past purchasing experiences, social relationships, age, and level of education all exert a significant influence on Chinese residents’ purchasing intentions. Finally, based on the above research results, the corresponding policy suggestions which mainly focus on the time of subsidy, the object of subsidy and the method of subsidy are offered for policy makers.

Keywords: Energy-efficient appliances; Purchasing intention; Subsidy policy; Structural equation model; Theory of planned behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307133
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:enepol:v:102:y:2017:i:c:p:430-439

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2016.12.049

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().