Energy Consumption in the French Residential Sector: How Much do Individual Preferences Matter?

Salomé Bakaloglou and Dorothée Charlier ()

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The aim of this research is to understand the impact of preference heterogeneity in explaining energy consumption in French homes. Using a discrete-continuous model and the conditional mixed-process estimator (CMP) enable us to address two potential endogeneities in residential energy consumption: energy prices and the choice of home energy characteristics. As a key contribution, we provide evidence that a preference for comfort over saving energy does have significant direct and indirect impacts on energy consumption (through the choice of dwelling), particularly for high-income households. Preferring comfort over economy or one additional degree of heating implies an average energy overconsumption of 10% and 7.8% respectively, up to 18% for high-income households. Our results strengthen the belief that household heterogeneity is an important factor in explaining energy consumption and could have meaningful implications for the design of public policy tools aimed at reducing energy consumption in the residential sector.

Keywords: Residential energy consumption; Household preferences; Discrete-continuous choice method; Conditional mixed-process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-ene and nep-reg
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01961638v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Energy Journal, inPress, 40 (3), pp.77-100

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01961638v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Energy Consumption in the French Residential Sector: How Much do Individual Preferences Matter? (2019)
Working Paper: Energy Consumption in the French Residential Sector: How Much Do Individual Preferences Matter? (2018)
Working Paper: Energy Consumption in the French Residential Sector: How Much do Individual Preferences Matter? (2018)
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:hal:journl:halshs-01961638

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().