Does climate influence households' thermal comfort decisions?

Enrica De Cian (), Filippo Pavanello, Teresa Randazzo, Malcolm Mistry and Marinella Davide
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Teresa Randazzo: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Malcolm Mistry: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice; CMCC

No 2019:02, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: This paper investigates how households have been adapting to climate change through the use of two technologies important for thermal comfort, air conditioning and thermal insulation. Merging a global gridded dataset of historical temperatures with the 2011 OECD EPIC survey, we study the determinants of installing air conditioning or adopting thermal insulation in response to a warmer climate in eight countries. After controlling for a set of demographic, socio-economic and attitudinal variables, we apply a binary probit model and find that exposure to a warmer climate influences only air conditioning adoption whereas, climatic conditions seem not to affect thermal insulation decisions which, instead, mainly depends on household wealth, dwelling characteristics, age, household size and propensity to energy-saving behaviours. This study does not find any evidence of a possible joint decision for the two technologies.

Keywords: Cross-section; climate change; adaptation; energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 O13 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-res
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ven:wpaper:2019:02

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