Environmental motivations behind individuals’ energy efficiency investments and daily energy-saving behaviour: evidence from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium

Vladimir Udalov (), Jens Perret and Veronique Vasseur
Additional contact information
Vladimir Udalov: University of Wuppertal / European Institute for International Economic Relations (EIIW)
Jens Perret: International School of Management, Cologne
Veronique Vasseur: Maastricht University

International Economics and Economic Policy, 2017, vol. 14, issue 3, No 6, 499 pages

Abstract: Abstract The impact of environmental motivations on the individual’s decisions regarding investments in energy efficiency and the adoption of energy-saving habits are analysed on the basis of a representative online survey carried out in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Various energy efficiency investments and daily energy-saving activities are considered. Accounting for endogeneity in the basic estimation model, in particular regarding energy conservation activities, the subject’s experience with extreme weather events are used as an instrument for environmental motivations. This study provides empirical evidence that individual energy efficiency investments are generally driven by environmental motivations. Additionally, for the Dutch and the German sub-samples environmental motivations positively affect daily energy-saving activities. The findings suggest that policy programmes aimed at raising environmental awareness and forming pro-environmental motivations can lead to an increase in energy efficiency investments and daily energy-saving activities.

Keywords: Environmental behaviour; Energy efficiency; Energy-saving; Instrumental variable approach; Environmental motivations; Extreme whether events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10368-017-0381-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:iecepo:v:14:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10368-017-0381-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10368/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10368-017-0381-7

Access Statistics for this article

International Economics and Economic Policy is currently edited by Paul J.J. Welfens, Holger C. Wolf, Christian Pierdzioch and Christian Richter

More articles in International Economics and Economic Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().