Households’ Willingness to Adopt Technological and Behavioral Energy Savings Measures: An Empirical Study in The Netherlands

Véronique Vasseur and Anne-Francoise Marique
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Véronique Vasseur: International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development, University Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Anne-Francoise Marique: Local Environnent: Management & Analysis, ArGenCo department, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-25

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate households’ willingness to adopt technological and behavioral energy savings measures, in their dwellings and for daily mobility. Based on the evidence that occupants’ behavior has a major impact on energy uses at home and on the road, this paper aims at investigating which determinants influence household preferences for energy-saving measures, both technical as well as behavioral ones, as well as highlighting the key determinants for adopting energy-savings measures, at the household scale. This paper will attempt to shed more light on the factors that may bridge the intention–behavior gap. The analysis is based on an empirical survey carried out in the Netherlands. Main results show that (1) behavioral energy saving measures are more acceptable than technical ones; (2) the adoption of energy savings measures at home is more likely than on the road; (3) there is a relatively small market for technical energy measures, especially through the initial investment and the low return on investment; (4) environmental aspects seem to be more important for relatively expensive technical energy measures; (5) the reason for taking technological energy measures is rather to be found in differences among socio-demographic background than in environmental concerns; and (6) comfort at home and on the road is an important explanatory variable that many respondents used to justify not implementing energy savings measures and should be investigated in further research.

Keywords: adoption of innovation; household’s behavior; energy management; energy savings; building and daily mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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