The Role of Risk and Trust Attitudes in Explaining Residential Energy Demand: Evidence from the United Kingdom

Benjamin Volland

No 16-02, IRENE Working Papers from IRENE Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: Recent research into the determinants of household energy consumption has aimed to incorporate findings from economics, sociology and psychology in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors determining energy demand. The current paper contributes to this nascent stream of literature by studying the relationship between risk attitudes, trust propensity and energy consumption at the household level. Drawing on the British Household Panel Survey, a well-known data set in the context of energy studies, I show that trust is negatively correlated with household energy demand, while higher risk tolerance leads to increases in residential energy use. Potential explanations for these findings are investigated, suggesting that risk preferences may be related with overall appliance stock and the size of the rebound effect.

Keywords: Risk attitudes; Trust; Energy expenditures; BHPS; UK Households. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q40 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www5.unine.ch/RePEc/ftp/irn/pdfs/WP16-02.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of risk and trust attitudes in explaining residential energy demand: Evidence from the United Kingdom (2017)
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:irn:wpaper:16-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IRENE Working Papers from IRENE Institute of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Siwar Khelifa ().