What are the Policy Drivers to Undertake Green Retrofitting Investments? The Role of Tax Incentives and Communication in Italian Households’ Decision-Making

Michela Faccioli (), Caterina Lucarelli (), Camilla Mazzoli () and Sabrina Severini ()
Additional contact information
Michela Faccioli: University of Trento
Caterina Lucarelli: Università Politecnica delle Marche
Camilla Mazzoli: Università Politecnica delle Marche
Sabrina Severini: University of Urbino

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, 2025, vol. 11, issue 3, No 13, 1237 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores households’ decision-making process to undertake green retrofitting investments, with the aim to identify the key behavioural drivers to adoption. We developed a discrete choice experiment survey and collected data from a sample of 434 individuals to explore the influence of monetary and non-monetary incentives on energy saving investment choices, focusing on the case of Italy, where a tax relief scheme (the so-called Superbonus) was introduced in 2020 to encourage green retrofitting investments. Our results show that the level of savings on energy bills, the environmental sustainability of the intervention and the comfort achieved all similarly contribute to adopt energy saving measures. Tax incentives, differently, were found to be less important drivers, except for those respondents who have a high level of green retrofitting cognition, suggesting a pivotal role of education and knowledge in driving choices. Our findings also indicate that communication matters: we show that green retrofitting decisions are influenced by the non-technical communication of the environmental benefits, while the use of technical expressions is found to be ineffective. These results are relevant to guide more efficient policy design and point to the need to combine targeted tax interventions with communication to encourage the uptake of energy saving measures.

Keywords: Energy savings; Green retrofitting; Fiscal measures; Communication; Education; Discrete choice experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40797-024-00283-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:italej:v:11:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s40797-024-00283-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40797

DOI: 10.1007/s40797-024-00283-5

Access Statistics for this article

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti is currently edited by Roberto Cellini

More articles in Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti from Springer, Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().