Abstract
The residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions, which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy-efficiency (EE) improvements in both emerging and developed countries. Yet, there are several persistent barriers that hinder the attainment of EE improvements in this area. Using data from a 2008 national representative survey of Spanish households, this paper is interested in the determinants of EE-related decisions. In particular, a discrete-choice model empirically analyzes whether pro-environmental households are more likely to invest in EE and to adopt daily energy-saving habits. We show that households with eco-friendly behaviors are more likely to investment in well-differentiated EE measures as well as to steer daily habits towards energy savings. However, no effects are found for households with environmental attitudes based on stated willingness to pay to protect the environment. In addition to this, households belonging to higher income groups and education levels are more likely to invest in EE but not to adopt energy-saving habits; while households with older members are less likely to invest in EE and show fewer eco-friendly habits.
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Notes
This is a certification system for high-energy efficiency products from the U.S. Green Building Council.
For the climatic zones, we follow the specification used by IDAE (Spanish Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving) in the SECH-SPAHOUSEC project (IDAE 2011). This classifies the country into 3 areas based on maximum, medium and minimum average temperatures along the period 1997–2007. Hence the variable takes values equal to one for North Atlantic, two for Continental and three for Mediterranean areas.
An alternative would be to use a logit model, even though, probit models are generally employed in this type of econometric analysis. The results of both models are very similar, theoretically as well as in our application.
The database indicates that washing machines and fridges exist in most Spanish households. Therefore, computation was facilitated by the use of a trivariate probit model where fridge represented the purchase of appliance.
We have rejected the inclusion of heteroskedasticity in our probit model as an additional robustness check, since a wrong functional form of the variances could lead to worse results.
For the estimation of indoor heating temperatures we exclude the Autonomous Communities of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands given the important climatic differences with respect to the Iberian peninsula.
Based on Figure 2 we construct the reduced sample with those Autonomous Communities with monthly average temperatures below 19 in year 2008, which leads to the exclusion of Andalusia.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Summary Statistics
Appendix 2: Regression Results
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Ramos, A., Labandeira, X. & Löschel, A. Pro-environmental Households and Energy Efficiency in Spain. Environ Resource Econ 63, 367–393 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9899-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9899-8