Italian consumers’ willingness to pay for renewable energy sources

Simona Bigerna () and Paolo Polinori

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: EU Directive 2009/72/CE imposes to the European Countries environmental and energy targets. The Italian goal is to attain a 17% share in electricity production from renewable energy sources (RES) by 2020. To make investment in renewables attractive, market prices must be profitable and the gap between the private and social costs of renewables must be filled using “persuasive” tools. The acceptance of such a burden may be controversial because it results in an increase in prices. It is interesting to estimate the consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for green electricity. We based our research on a national survey conducted in November 2007 in Italy. We used a stochastic payment card (SPC) including a “certainty correction” and proposing five degrees of acceptance. An empirical analysis shows that there is a substantial willingness among Italian consumers to partially cover the cost of achieving the RES goal.

Keywords: contingent valuation; interval data; stochastic payment card; renewable energy sources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C24 Q26 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-eur and nep-res
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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