Adoption of retrofit measures among home-owners in EU countries: The effects of access to capital and debt aversion

Joachim Schleich, Corinne Faure and Thomas Meissner

No S08/2019, Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" from Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI)

Abstract: Energy efficiency policies often involve low-interest loans for retrofit measures in private buildings; the main target of these loans are meant to be households with otherwise poor access to capital. However, such programs can only be successful if the targeted households also take up these loans. This paper stud-ies the relation between access to capital and debt aversion and the adoption of retrofit measures in European Union countries, employing a demographically representative household survey including about 6,600 homeowners in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The findings suggest that debt aversion negatively affects the adoption of retro-fit measures by homeowners. In particular, debt-averse homeowners with poor access to capital are less likely to have adopted retrofit measures than non-debt-averse homeowners with poor access to capital. The findings further pro-vide evidence that low-interest loan programs should be targeted at younger homeowners with lower income and less formal education.

Keywords: energy efficiency; debt aversion; soft loans; energy policy; econo-metrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-eur
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/205148/1/1679969404.pdf (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Adoption of retrofit measures among homeowners in EU countries: The effects of access to capital and debt aversion (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:fisisi:s082019

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