EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Energy saving in Swedish households. The (relative) importance of environmental attitudes

Johan Martinsson, Lennart J. Lundqvist and Aksel Sundström

Energy Policy, 2011, vol. 39, issue 9, 5182-5191

Abstract: The objectives for energy saving in the housing sector set by recent Swedish energy and climate policies are quite demanding. This article uses nation-wide Swedish survey data from 2004 to 2007 to explore the potential for achieving those targets. Earlier findings that socio-economic characteristics such as age, housing type and income are strongly linked to higher propensities to save on heating and hot water usage are confirmed by ordered logistic regression models. However, general environmental attitudes are also found to play a crucial role. When assessing the relative importance of socio-economic factors and environmental attitudes, the effect on energy saving is generally greater for the former than the latter. In addition, important interaction effects are identified. In relative terms, the effect of environmental attitudes is clearly stronger among households in apartment blocks than among those in detached housing, and stronger among households with higher income than among those with lower income. We end by discussing the implications for the selection and targeting of policy measures to tap the energy savings potential in the population.

Keywords: Household; energy; saving; Socio-economic; characteristics; Environmental; attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (88)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511004460
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:39:y:2011:i:9:p:5182-5191

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:9:p:5182-5191