is protectionism on the rise assessing national trade policies during the crisis of 2008 to understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008 this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009 the index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country taking into account the share of each good in trade as well as its corresponding import demand elasticity results show that there is no widespread increase in protectionism via tariff policies since the global financial crisis has unfolded while many countries have adjusted tariffs upward on selected products only a handful of countries such as malawi russia argentina turkey and china focus on products that have significant impacts on trade flows the united states and the european union by contrast rely mainly on anti dumping duties to shield domestic industries overall while the rise in tariffs and anti dumping duties in these countries may have jointly caused global trade to drop by as much as us 43 billion during the crisis period it explains less than 2 percent of the collapse in world trade

off the cliff and back credit conditions and international trade during the global financial crisis abstract we study the collapse of international trade flows during the global financial crisis using detailed data on monthly us imports we show that credit conditions were an important channel through which the crisis affected trade volumes by exploiting the variation in the cost of capital across countries and over time as well as the variation in financial vulnerability across sectors countries with higher interbank rates and thus tighter credit markets exported less to the us during the peak of the crisis this effect was especially pronounced in sectors that require extensive external financing have limited access to trade credit or have few collateralizable assets exports of financially vulnerable industries were thus more sensitive to the cost of external capital than exports of less vulnerable industries and this sensitivity rose during the financial crisis the quantitative implications of our estimates for trade volumes highlight the large real effects of financial crises and the potential gains from policy intervention

household energy and climate mitigation policies investigating energy practices in the housing sector abstract one central aim of climate change mitigation in the european union is to reduce energy consumption in the housing sector in order to ensure effectiveness of policies targeting household energy conservation it is important to investigate existing energy practices of different social groups this article describes and explains energy practices in three leading states in environmental politics technological innovation and support for renewable energy production denmark austria and the united kingdom based on a longitudinal analysis of housing utility costs from the european community statistics on income and living conditions we show that income plays a central role in households energy practices while high income households have higher overall energy consumption low income groups spend a larger share of their income on utility costs the variation of energy consumption across income groups is related to household characteristics characteristics of the dwellings and cross national differences in the housing sector

direct rebound effect of residential gas demand empirical evidence from france abstract energy policymakers are increasingly concerned about energy efficiency improvements as such improvements are considered to be a key strategy in reducing energy demand in the residential sector however energy efficiency investments may not yield the expected energy savings due to the rebound effect concept which leads to lower savings than expected when energy efficiency increases using the standard ols regression and autoregressive distributed lag cointegration ardl approach this paper provides estimates of the magnitude of the rebound effect for residential gas consumption in france using 1983 2015 annual time series data the methodology is based on estimates of the gas demand elasticity with respect to service price the empirical findings indicate that the variables used in the model are cointegrated and suggest the presence of an obvious rebound effect in residential gas use more specifically estimates of the direct rebound effect in residential gas demand are approximately 53 in the short run and approximately 60 in the long run our findings reject the hypothesis of a backfire effect regarding residential gas use in france and hence suggest incorporating carbon taxation energy efficiency and alternative energy in the formulation of an energy saving policy to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy in france

electricity curtailment behaviors in greek households different behaviors different predictors abstract this paper argues that electricity curtailment behaviors i e frequent and or low cost or free energy saving behaviors in households are distinct from one another and they thus should be analyzed and promoted we test this claim with data from telephone interviews with greek households in the capital city of athens n 285 analyzing the impact of a number of demographical structural psychological based on the theory of planned behavior and moral based on norms activation predictors though hierarchical binary logistic regression modeling we find that that each electricity curtailment behavior depends on a different mix of predictors with age gender and perceived behavioral control being statistically significant for most behaviors overall the psychological and the demographical structural clusters of variables substantially contribute to the explained variance of electricity curtailment behaviors the moral cluster s contribution is not statistically significant since moral concerns are largely interwoven in the psychological constructs

determining factors of curtailment and purchasing energy related behaviours changing people s behaviour in relation to energy consumption will be one of the most important challenges in the near future we analyzed the determinants behind individuals decisions to adopt curtailment behaviour or to purchase energy saving products using data from 213 university students we explored the influence of personal capabilities and moral norms along with trust in information on energy saving actions provided by different entities on two energy saving behaviours the results of the statistical model emphasise how personal norms and trust in information provided by private companies on the one hand and family and friends on the other strongly influence the adoption of energy saving actions and curtailment behaviours the paper reveals the pivotal role of private companies in developing the market demand for energy saving products by providing credible and scientifically based information on environmental performance the paper also contributes to strengthening the reliability of value belief norm theory and emphasizes the role of trust in information as a contextual factor that influences the adoption of a pro environmental behaviour

cultural proximity a source of trade flow resilience while the significant influence of cultural proximity on bilateral trade flows has been extensively documented in the literature its possible role in times of crisis has not yet been raised relying on a panel estimation of a gravity model incorporating cultural proximity parameters we evidence the existence of a significant surge in the impact of the different components of cultural proximity during economic recession the trade resilience among countries sharing a cultural bond is not a pure composition effect as it also appears within product categories to understand this unexpected effect we discuss different mechanisms that emphasise the potential mitigating influence of cultural proximity on some determinants of the trade collapse namely the uncertainty shock the increased moral hazard and the emergence of ethnocentric preferences

dynamic analysis of consumer response to marketing strategies this paper develops a methodology for modeling consumer response that integrates previous research in stochastic brand selection diffusion of innovation test market analysis and new product design the methodology makes it practical to extend brand selection models to include diffusion phenomena such as awareness trial and information flow purchase timing and brand selection are interdependent and both phenomena depend jointly on managerial controls such as advertising coupons price off promotion product positioning and consumer characteristics within this general structure we provide practical estimation procedures a least squares approximation to the maximum likelihood estimates to determine the parameters which link managerial controls to consumer response closed form solutions are derived for cumulative awareness cumulative trial penetration expected sales and purchases due to promotion all as a function of time we also provide simplified expressions for equilibrium t market share tradeoffs among complexity of the diffusion process number of managerial variables nonstationarity complexity of purchase timing consumer segmentation and sample size are made explicit so that the marketing scientist can customize his analyses to the managerial problems that he faces the effects of sample size data interval frequency and collinearity in the explanatory variables are investigated with simulations based on a five state consumer response process which depends on 8 10 marketing variables the paper closes with a brief description of the application and predictive test of a consumer response model based on the methodology

determinants and policy implications for household electricity saving behaviour evidence from beijing china this research sets out to explore the possibilities for further saving in household electricity consumption through a study of the residents willingness and behavioural characteristics in electricity saving as applied within a chinese context based on an extensive literature review the authors argue that economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience may have a positive correlation with household electricity saving behaviour while the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities may exert a negative effect on it through a sample of 816 randomly selected residents in beijing the propositions are examined using logit regression analysis the conclusions support the ideas concerning both the positive influence of economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience as they affect broader electricity saving behaviour and the negative influence of the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities finally some inferences are drawn and suggestions are offered for policy makers and further studies

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

exploring the links between community based governance and sustainable energy use quantitative evidence from flanders community based energy organizations have been said to influence their members energy related behavior by activating social norms and by providing trustworthy information about sustainable energy investments and behaviors however little is known yet about members actual energy use and how it differs from that of individuals who do not participate in such projects in particular selection effects are likely to arise i e community based energy projects may attract people that are different from the underlying population in terms of energy use this article empirically addresses the question of the selection into community based energy projects in terms of energy use focusing on the case of renewable energy cooperatives based on quantitative data from an original survey conducted with one renewable energy cooperative in flanders and using probit regression analyses it contrasts a sample of cooperative members with an appropriate comparison group in terms of electricity usage the results show that electricity consumption is positively related with cooperative membership suggesting that high use consumers have greater incentives to join a community based organization which provides assistance and advice on the adoption of green technologies and energy efficiency measures these findings contribute to an understanding of the relationship between community based governance and sustainable energy practices

social diffusion of energy related practices and representations patterns and policies in portugal and belgium the authors thank the fundacao para a ciencia e tecnologia portugal for the support under the grant mit pt ses sues 0037 2008 the interviews in wallonia were realised during an international project funded in 2008 2011 by intelligent energy europe ideal epbd improving dwellings by enhancing actions on labelling for the energy per formance in buildings directive grant iee 07 600 si2 499426 whereas the present analysis in terms of social diffusion was realised after the completion of that project

energy tax credits and housing improvement this paper investigates whether federal and state tax credits allowed to households who make energy saving improvements to their residence lead to an increase in improvement activity a two period utility maximization model of household behaviour is used to determine the theoretical influence of tax credits energy prices and other factors on the optimal magnitude of conservation capital improvement regressions using various qualitative measures of conservation improvement as the dependent variable are estimated using household level energy consumption and improvement data consistent with evidence from earlier surveys the empirical results do not support the hypothesis that energy tax credits lead to more widespread or more extensive energy conservation improvement activity

more efficient household electricity use since 1973 the efficiency of most energy uses in homes has improved throughout the oecd 1 this means that to provide a given amount of energy service for example heating cooling locomotion or mechanical force less energy is required today than was needed in the past these improvements have been gained through the introduction of new appliances and for space heating and cooling new homes with more efficient building shells and the retrofitting of the existing building stock in this report we analyse some of the past changes in the efficiency of household appliance electricity use and discuss prospects for and barriers to further increases in the future

does environmental concern change the tragedy of the commons factors affecting energy saving behaviors and electricity usage electricity consumption produces private goods such as heat for homes but fossil fuel consumption impacts the public goods of clean air and water while self interests can increase usage social interests such as global climate change can impact an individual s attitude toward energy consumption this paper examines the tragedy of the commons using household data and compares the impact of self and social interests in predicting electricity consumption using both stated and observed behavioral data the results show that self interests have a greater impact on energy saving behaviors and electricity use we extend the analysis to control for an individual s environmental concern and perceived behavioral impact finding similar results and supporting the notion that the tragedy of the commons occurs regardless of a person s perception or environmental concern these findings may explain why pro environmental attitudes do not necessarily lead to pro environmental behaviors and it contributes to our understanding of the motivating factors for energy savings and electricity use by examining both stated and observed behaviors policies aimed at electricity reduction may have a greater impact if they focus on private interests such as pricing rebates subsidies and taxes rather than social interests alone

macroeconomic fluctuations and the allocation of time what are the fundamental driving forces of macroeconomic fluctuations in particular why do people spend more time working in booms and less in recessions these are basic questions of macroeconomics recent thinking has emphasized technology shifts preference shifts and changes in government purchases as likely driving forces it is useful to distinguish atemporal and intertemporal effects of the driving forces under standard assumptions the technology shift has no effect through atemporal channels because income and substitution effects exactly offset a straightforward decomposition of movements of employment attributes most of them to the atemporal effects of preference shifts

differences in perception how the experts look at energy efficiency findings from a finnish survey abstract using energy efficiently is generally considered to be essential for a continuing prosperous future as a result improving efficiency has become a focus of attention and recently a lot of time and effort has been expended to develop new energy efficiency methodologies and technologies considering the amount of focused attention the rate of improvement has not been encouraging human behaviour is an important factor of the energy efficiency challenge and research has revealed several consumer profiles with significantly different perceptions on energy issues in this study the focus is not on consumers but on energy efficiency professionals a number of finnish energy efficiency professionals from both the private and public sectors were surveyed revealing that experts have decidedly different perceptions regarding energy efficiency our analysis of survey results suggests that energy efficiency expertise comes from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds and that instead of working on common ground experts with differing perspectives are endeavouring to make progress in a complex and multifaceted arena focusing on specific areas in which players need to share a common understanding of terminology and where common and clearly stated goals can be established should result in an acceleration of efficiency improvement results

implications of rational inattention abstract a constraint that actions can depend on observations only through a communication channel with finite shannon capacity is shown to be able to play a role very similar to that of a signal extraction problem or an adjustment cost in standard control problems the resulting theory looks enough like familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting

what s driving energy efficient appliance label awareness and purchase propensity the eu appliance energy consumption labeling scheme is a key component of efforts to increase the diffusion of energy efficient household appliances in this paper the determinants of consumer knowledge of the energy label for household appliances and the choice of class a energy efficient appliances are jointly estimated using data from a large survey of more than 20 000 german households the results for five major appliances suggest that lack of knowledge of the energy label can generate considerable bias in both estimates of rates of uptake of class a appliances and in estimates of the underlying determinants of choice of class a appliance simulations of the choice to purchase a class a appliance given knowledge of the labeling framework reveal that residence characteristics and in several cases regional electricity prices strongly increase the propensity to purchase a class a appliance but socio economic characteristics have surprisingly little impact on appliance energy class choice

the impact of attribute preferences on adoption timing the case of photo voltaic pv solar cells for household electricity generation we are concerned with micro generation individual households generating electricity using a renewable technology we focus on modeling the adoption probability of photo voltaic solar panels by households using data from ontario canada where a generous feed in tariff is available to households generating electricity from solar panels we measure household level preferences for panels and use these preferences along with household characteristics to predict adoption time intentions we use discrete choice experiments to measure household level preferences and establish a causal link between the attributes of the technology and adoption time intentions using discrete time survival mixture analysis significant preferences included lower cost greater energy savings and lower fossil fuel inflation the conditional hazard probability of adoption at a particular time given no previous adoption showed that the attribute preferences had intuitively reasonable effects the hazard probabilities allow us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over a 10 year period per household technology awareness has a significant effect on the adoption probability reinforcing the need for effective education our approach indicates the level of heterogeneity in preferences particularly high for investment criteria and co2 emissions these findings suggest that education campaigns should explain more about investment criteria feed in tariffs and environmental effects

lost in translation the effect of cultural values on mergers around the world we find strong evidence that three key dimensions of national culture trust hierarchy and individualism affect merger volume and synergy gains the volume of cross border mergers is lower when countries are more culturally distant in addition greater cultural distance in trust and individualism leads to lower combined announcement returns these findings are robust to year and country level fixed effects time varying country pair and deal level variables as well as instrumental variables for cultural differences based on genetic and somatic differences the results are the first large scale evidence that cultural differences have substantial impacts on multiple aspects of cross border mergers

do environmental benefits matter evidence from a choice experiment among house owners in germany residential buildings strongly contribute to global co2 emissions due to the high energy demand for electricity and heating particularly in industrialised countries within the eu decentralised heat generation is of particular relevance for future climate policy as its emissions are not covered by the eu ets we conducted a choice experiment concerning energy retrofits for existing houses in germany in the experiment the approximately 400 sampled house owners could either choose a modern heating system or an improved thermal insulation for their home we used standard and mixed logit specifications to analyse the choice data we found environmental benefits to have a significant impact on choices of heating systems however they played no role in terms of insulation choices based on the estimated mixed logit model we further obtained willingness to pay wtp measures for co2 savings

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

native language spoken language translation and trade we construct new series for common native language and common spoken language for 195 countries which we use together with series for common official language and linguistic proximity in order to draw inferences about 1 the aggregate impact of all linguistic factors on bilateral trade 2 the separate role of ease of communication as distinct from ethnicity and trust and 3 the contribution of translation and interpreters to ease of communication the results show that the impact of linguistic factors all together is at least twice as great as the usual dummy variable for common language resting on official language would say in addition ease of communication plays a distinct role apart from ethnicity and trust and so far as ease of communication enters translation and interpreters are significant finally emigrants have much to do with the role of ethnicity and trust in linguistic influence

do customer information programs reduce household electricity demand the irish program abstract we study empirically the effectiveness of a customer information program to decrease energy demand by increasing efficient electricity use this demand side management dsm program aims at reducing the lack of information on the customers side that is documented in related literature we study the irish dsm program which is particularly well suited to investigate this issue as strategic behavior is ruled out in this setting for both customers and suppliers on the customers side because information programs allow only for a limited substitution of own effort on the producers side because the specificity of the irish case left no room for strategic behavior we find that providing customers with information reduced overall electricity demand by roughly 7 as well as reducing demand fluctuations over the year further we find that the dsm program had a larger impact upon long run demand with consumers short run demand behavior not being changed significantly

identifying electricity saving potential in rural china empirical evidence from a household survey in recent years there has been a fast growing body of literature examining energy saving potential in relation to electricity however empirical studies focusing on non western nations are limited to fill this gap this study intends to examine the electricity saving potential of rural households in china using a unique data set from the china residential electricity consumption survey crecs in collaboration with the china general social survey cgss conducted nationwide at the household level in rural china we use a stochastic frontier model which allows us to decompose residential electricity consumption into the minimum necessary amount of consumption based on physical characteristics e g house size house age number of televisions or refrigerators and estimate the consumption slack i e the amount of electricity consumption that could be saved which depends on various factors we find that rural households in china are generally efficient in electricity saving and the saving potential is affected by fast information feedback and social demographic characteristics instead of by the averaged electricity price or energy efficiency labelling signals in addition we find no evidence of regional heterogeneity on electricity saving potential for rural households policy implications are derived

the erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence high trade between countries with colonial ties may be explained by government policies that establish preferential access or as a consequence of networks formed through social interactions using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2003 we examine the eect of independence on post colonial trade the severing of formal colonial relations can lead to an immediate reduction in trade as preferential access is eliminated as well as a gradual reduction corresponding to the deterioration of trading networks our results reveal that independence reduces colonial trade with its colonizer metropole the reduction cumulates over a 30 year period and the disruption is particularly severe for hostile separations we also find that overall colonial trade falls subsequent to independence but to a lesser extent than trade with the metropole

exploring domestic energy saving the role of environmental concern and background variables abstract the main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether residents environmental concern has any effect on their energy saving curtailments and efficiency investments the novelty of the present work lies in the fact that it seeks to investigate this topic in a multi country setting exploiting data from nine oecd countries australia canada czech republic france italy south korea netherlands norway and sweden and also in that it employs a latent variable model which allows us to examine the conditions necessary for the results to be comparable across different countries novel in this paper is also the focus on the role of environmental concern as a factor of several curtailments and efficiency investments our results suggest that people with higher environmental concern are on average more likely to perform energy saving curtailments and also are more likely to have some energy efficiency retrofits installed in dwellings most of the socio economic and demographic variables have mixed effects on efficiency investments and curtailments however some interesting patterns emerged with respect to the age of respondents household income education and gender of respondents and also the size of household

understanding the spectrum of residential energy saving behaviours french evidence using disaggregated data analysing household energy saving behaviours is crucial to improve energy consumption predictions and energy policy making how should we quantitatively measure them what are their determinants this study explores the main factors influencing residential energy saving behaviours based on a bottom up multivariate statistical approach using data from the recent french phebus survey firstly we assess energy saving behaviours on a one dimension scale using irt secondly we use linear regression with an innovative variable selection method via adaptive lasso to tease out the effects of both macro and micro factors on the behavioural score the results highlight the impact of five main attributes incentivizing energy saving behaviours based on cross variable analyses energy price household income education level age of head of household and dwelling energy performance in addition our results suggest that the analysis of the inverted u shape impact of age enables the expansion of the energy consumption life cycle theory to energy saving behaviours abstract analysing household energy saving behaviours is crucial to improve energy consumption predictions and energy policy making how should we quantitatively measure them what are their determi nants this study explores the main factors influencing residential energy saving behaviours based on a bottom up multivariate statistical approach using data from the recent french phebus survey firstly we assess energy saving behaviours on a one dimension scale using irt secondly we use linear regression with an innovative variable selection method via adaptive lasso to tease out the effects of both macro and micro factors on the behavioural score the results highlight the impact of five main attributes incentivizing energy saving behaviours based on cross variable analyses energy price household income education level age of head of household and dwelling energy performance in addition our results suggest that the analysis of the inverted u shape impact of age enables the expansion of the energy consumption life cycle theory to energy saving behaviours

the trade creating effects of business and social networks evidence from france using theory grounded estimations of trade flow equations this paper investigates the role that business and social networks play in shaping trade between french regions the bilateral intensity of networks is quantified using the financial structure and location of french firms and bilateral stocks of migrants compared to a situation without networks migrants are shown to double bilateral trade flows while networks of firms multiply trade flows by as much as four in some specifications finally taking network effects into account divides the estimation of the impact of transport costs and of the effect of administrative borders by around three

the feasibility of changing electricity consumption patterns time of day pricing information feedback group metering appliance stocks and demographic variables are examined as a means of synchronizing the demand of residential electricity peak and off peak power were found to be weak substitutes in this 20 month study verbal responses indicated that information feedback served as a reminder to schedule activities and that group metering reduced incentives

consumer responses towards home energy financial incentives a survey based study abstract residential energy efficient and renewable energy eere products play an important role in energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction various financial incentive programs have been developed to promote the adoption of these products however their effectiveness in attracting consumers is not very well understood in this study we investigated impacts of financial incentives on homeowner s decision making towards six eere products two forms of incentives tax credits and interest free loans were examined through a household mailing survey in florida the united states results showed that although half of the respondents were interested in eere products the high investment cost was a major concern that hindered their purchase activities homeowners were attracted to financial incentives and valued tax credits much higher than interest free loans the current federal home energy tax credit levels were found to attract only 2 12 percent of homeowners to buy eere products the willingness of participation was especially low for the costly products such as solar panels the participation rate was also very low for lower income i e annual household income below 50 000 families living in older residences this study contributes to the understanding of economic and social aspects of consumer decision making on energy efficiency and alternative energy

energy saving in italy in the late 1990s which role for non monetary motivations abstract the paper studies the relationship between energy saving behaviour monetary drivers and non monetary motivations in italy in a period the end of the 1990s when the energy industry was not yet liberalized there were no energy saving incentive schemes and the environmental sensitivity and information were lower we consider as dependent variable the frequency with which individuals switch the light off when leaving a room as monetary drivers income and perceived energy costs while non monetary motives in our model are measured by proxies of pro environmental attitudes environmental information social pressure and pro social behaviours the analysis is based on probit and logit models estimated on a sample from the multipurpose household survey dataset conducted by the italian statistical office we find that individuals who were less concerned about environmental issues were also more attentive in energy saving behaviour suggesting together with results about income and perceived energy costs that monetary motivations were primary in driving this energy saving behaviour such findings are robust to the inclusion of variables accounting for pro social behaviours altruism by individuals who claim to be more concerned about broad environmental externalities may have adversely affected their propensity to optimize energy consumption

adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector an empirical analysis based on energy survey data this paper empirically explores factors driving the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector which mainly consists of public and private services trade commerce and some small industries the measures considered include switching off installations or lighting managing energy use and routinely considering energy efficiency for new purchases our statistical analysis employs single and multivariate probit models relying on more than 1500 observations from a recent representative survey of the tertiary sector in germany the findings suggest that the landlord tenant dilemma holds for the adoption of all low cost energy efficiency measures considered they further imply that financial incentives such as higher energy prices accelerate the diffusion of low cost energy measures our findings also provide some evidence that knowledge transfer from the mother company to a subsidiary enhances the diffusion of low cost energy efficiency measures likewise public sector organizations are more likely to adopt energy management by and large though sectoral heterogeneity appears to have little impact on the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures

communications on energy household energy conservation abstract this study assesses the influence of attitudinal and socio economic factors on household energy conservation actions a household interview survey in regina saskatchewan found that respondents perceive an energy problem although no association with energy conservation actions was determined two attitudinal and five socio economic variables influence household energy conservation energy and monetary savings are available to households through energy conservation public awareness of household energy conservation through the media can reinforce existing energy conservation actions and encourage new actions

consumer attitudes towards domestic solar power systems the success of the uk policy to reduce carbon emissions is partly dependent on the ability to persuade householders to become more energy efficient and to encourage installation of domestic solar systems solar power is an innovation in the uk but the current policy of stimulating the market with grants is not resulting in widespread adoption this case study using householders in central england investigates householder attitudes towards characteristics of solar systems and identifies some of the barriers to adoption the study utilises diffusion of innovations theory to identify attitudes towards system attributes and isolates the characteristics that are preventing a pragmatic early majority from adopting the technology a group of early adopters and a group of assumed early majority adopters of solar power were surveyed and the results show that overall although the early majority demonstrate a positive perception of the environmental characteristics of solar power its financial economic and aesthetic characteristics are limiting adoption differences exist between the two groups showing support for the concept of a chasm between adopter categories after moore crossing the chasm marketing and selling high tech products to mainstream customers second ed harper perennial new york however if consumers cannot identify the relative advantage of solar power over their current sources of power which is supplied readily and cheaply through a mains system it is unlikely that adoption will follow recommendations concerning the marketing and development of solar products are identified

energy requirements of household consumption a case study of the netherlands this article describes the results of several research programmes that together aim at the development and application of methodologies that enable the study of long term environmental effects mainly related to the total household energy demand of household consumption in relation to other economic sectors this is usually described as the household metabolism approach in this article we use energy consumption and co2 emissions as proxies for long term impacts on the environment the major long term environmental effects of several hundred dutch household consumption categories have been determined by means of the hybrid energy analysis methodology total energy consumption and related co2 emission data have been calculated as a function of household income and family type past trends have been studied by a time series 1950 1990 analysis technical reduction potentials have been calculated for mid and long term scenarios it is concluded that the set of methodologies described form a useful tool for the analysis of unsustainable trends in household consumption patterns and associated energy requirements in the past and the present the results indicate that present trends lead towards unsustainability however reversal of these trends is feasible if this starts in the immediate future and if it is maintained for decades c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

the influences of financial and non financial factors on energy saving behaviour a field experiment in japan abstract this study examines the influences of financial and non financial factors on electricity conservation behaviour a random sample of 236 japanese households participated in the field experiment and the participants were offered two interventions such as monetary rewards depending on their reduction in electricity consumption and comparative feedback the average saving rates of the i reward intervention group 5 9 and the ii reward with comparative feedback group 8 2 are statistically larger than those of the iii control group 1 7 our study demonstrates the following first our econometric analysis confirmed a significant response by households to financial incentives but a more inconclusive response to the treatment that provided non financial additional information second we found a positive influence of treatment externalities across time and households on energy saving third there is a heterogeneous treatment effect in the reward intervention group with the households having a high new ecological paradigm nep score being more likely to respond to the reward programme and save electricity than those that do not finally and most interestingly differences in responses to the questionnaire before and after the experiment suggest that the participants had underestimated the marginal costs of saving electricity before they actually started to do so

energy requirements of households in brazil abstract in this study we determine the total direct plus indirect energy requirements of a given set of brazilian households we use a generalized input output model in order to calculate the energy embodied in goods and services purchased by households of different income level in 11 capital cities of brazil our results show that on average the total energy intensity of household expenditure increases with income level although there is a considerable spread in energy intensities within income classes as well as disparities between regions of the country the total yearly average energy requirement per household in brazil in 1995 96 was 173 6 gj 61 of which was indirect with 32 8 gj for the lower income level 66 of which was indirect and 602 2 gj for the higher income level 62 of which was indirect of this total average energy requirement 76 was required for only three consumption categories utilities 31 mobility 28 and shelter 17 this analysis calls for the attention that has to be given not only to the direct energy consumption as motor fuels and electricity for example but also to the consumption categories that encompass an important part of the indirect energy requirement of households in capital cities in brazil

harmonization of renewable electricity feed in laws in the european union this paper focuses on the harmonization of feed in laws in the european union as a support mechanism for the promotion of renewable electricity in particular it proposes a methodology for harmonization based on a feed in law with a modular and transparent premium for renewable electricity producers this premium considers technology costs some grid services political incentives and national priorities the proposed approach includes flexibility mechanisms to update and revise premiums to avoid windfall profits for producers and to share technology innovation benefits with electricity consumers while maintaining incentives for innovation our approach is based on the review of the main features of the german and spanish feed in laws and takes into account other necessary considerations for harmonization such as grid access funding definitions and standards ownership of rights derived from renewables and exceptions for small non commercial producers and energy intensive industries

exploring the consumer decision process in the adoption of solar energy systems this study examines residential solar energy systems within an adoption and diffusion of innovations framework the findings indicate considerable differences between adopters and nonadopters on many measures multivariate nominal scale analysis is used to develop classification models based on both attribute perceptions of solar energy systems and demographic characteristics

rationally inattentive macroeconomic wedges abstract this paper argues that the solution to a dynamic optimization problem of consumption and labor under finite information processing capacity can simultaneously explain the intertemporal and intratemporal labor wedges it presents a partial equilibrium model where a representative risk adverse consumer chooses information about wealth with limited attention the paper compares ex post realizations of models with finite and infinite capacity the model produces macroeconomic wedges and measures of elasticity consistent with the literature these findings suggest that aconsumption labor model with information processing constraints can explain the difference between predicted and observed consumption and employment behavior

residential energy efficient technology adoption energy conservation knowledge and attitudes an analysis of european countries abstract relationships between measures of household energy use behavior and household characteristics are estimated using a unique dataset of approximately 5000 households in 10 eu countries and norway family age composition patterns are found to have a distinct impact on household energy use behavior households with young children are more likely to adopt energy efficient technologies and energy conservation practices and place primary importance on energy savings for environmental reasons by contrast households with a high share of elderly members place more importance on financial savings and have lower levels of technology adoption energy conservation practice use and knowledge about household energy use education levels also matter with higher levels associated with energy efficient technology adoption and energy conservation practice use similarly university education increases the stated importance of energy savings for greenhouse gas reductions and decreases the stated importance for financial reasons education impacts also vary greatly across survey countries and there is some evidence of an eastern western european divide with respect to attitudes towards energy savings these cross country differences highlight the need to balance a common eu energy efficiency policy framework with flexibility for country specific policies to address unique constraints to energy efficient technology and conservation practice adoption

procedures and criteria to develop and evaluate household sustainable consumption indicators abstract communication about very complex problems like household sustainable consumption in simple terms is still a major challenge despite the diversity of tools to measure household consumption clearer indicators are needed to more effectively communicate with the general public the main objective of this research was to develop an approach to define the main procedures and criteria to built household sustainable consumption assessment tools based on indicator sets a review of available household sustainable consumption assessment metrics and related initiatives was conducted this included a comparative analysis of the different approaches the review revealed that the majority of these initiatives are focused upon specific domains e g energy or waste but none used an integrated approach in the sustainable consumption domains furthermore it was found that few methods used indicators to measure and assess household sustainable consumption principal components and a checklist of key good practice factors that a household sustainable consumption indicator system should include were developed due to the need to communicate effectively to engage stakeholders and to address the complexity involved in the measurement and assessment of household sustainable consumption the proposed integrated approach was designed to evaluate household sustainable consumption

household level innovation diffusion model of photo voltaic pv solar cells from stated preference data we focus on predicting the adoption time probabilities of photo voltaic solar panels by households using discrete choice experiments and an innovation diffusion model the primary objective of this research is cohesively mapping the theory of disruptive innovation into diffusion of innovations to aid policy makers by linking two critical uncertainties of new technology 1 whether households prefer the new attributes of the new technology and how these preferences vary by market segments and 2 when are they going to adopt if at all our study uses recent developments of discrete choice experiments and establishes a causal link between the attributes of the technology attitudinal constructs and socio demographics and adoption time probabilities using the bass diffusion model the data was collected from ontario a province of canada the innovation diffusion model allows us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over time per household technology awareness and energy cost saving have a significant effect on the adoption probability reinforcing the need for effective education these findings also suggest that campaigns should explain more about investment criteria feed in tariffs and environmental attributes this study findings call for a need to use seeding strategies to accelerate exogenous word of mouth wom for this new technology

product based cultural change is the village global we provide a model of product based cultural change where trade integration leads to cultural convergence a standard trade model of dixit stiglitz monopolistic competition is coupled with a micro founded model of cultural dynamics we show that access to varieties that are attached to a global cultural type changes the incentives of parents to socialize their children and transmit their type the resulting increase in agents of the global cultural type leads to a magnification of the initial shock a striking feature of the model is that even temporary shocks to openness may have permanent effects through the changing distribution of preferences in the economy

household behavior and the use of natural gas for home heating the factors that determine energy use for home heating are investigated in this study household behavior and home characteristics prove to be the major determinants whereas attitudes are of minor importance home insulation has two opposing effects on energy use lower thermostat settings but more airing out of rooms

the devil is in the details household electricity saving behavior and the role of information abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze swedish households willingness to increase their daily efforts to save electricity the analysis builds on a broad theoretical framework which embraces both economic and norm based motivations in explaining household behavior the paper pays particular attention to the role of information about the availability of different behavioral changes that can be undertaken at the household level the empirical results are based on a postal survey that was sent out to 1200 swedish households and the econometric analysis is carried out within a so called ordered probit framework our results indicate that costs environmental attitudes and social interactions are all important determinants of electricity saving activities within swedish households we tested the hypothesis that information about available savings measures that is presented in a more concrete and specific way is more likely to affect stated behavior than is more general information and the data collected support this notion the paper ends by discussing some implications of these results for the design of future informative policy measures in the energy efficiency field

occupant behaviour as a fourth driver of fuel poverty aka warmth energy deprivation a conceptual framework for occupant behaviour as a driver of fuel poverty is presented comprising housing and use of the home heating and energy arrangements and thermal comfort household structure and dynamics health and well being household finances and social activity and relations this framework informs longitudinal analysis of movements into and out of fuel poverty among households in deprived communities in glasgow household surveys across ten years yielded a longitudinal sample of 3297 cases where initial and subsequent fuel poverty status was recorded using an experiential measure a third of households changed their fuel poverty status over time 18 moving out of fuel poverty and 16 moving in factors strongly associated with movements into fuel poverty included being a single parent or 2 27 experiencing a mental health problem or 2 74 and remaining out of work or 1 89 movement out of fuel poverty was less likely among those with infrequent family contact or 0 55 and who moved home or 0 66 home improvements had no effect upon the experience of fuel poverty it is argued that the policy problem should be considered one of warmth and energy deprivation accompanied by a broader interpretation of vulnerability to as well as from fuel poverty

energy demand in greece abstract this paper examines the impact of the two energy crises 1973 74 and 1978 79 on energy demand in greece initially some specific characteristics of energy consumption patterns before and after 1973 are presented and compared then demand parameters for hydroelectric energy liquid fuels and solid fuels were estimated using data for the period 1963 1984 and alternative econometric methods ols 2sls fiml to ensure that estimates do not vary across different estimation methods appropriate tests were used to examine whether a structural change in energy demand has occured following either of the two crises the results indicate that while consumption patterns may be different due to price and income changes after the crises the parameters of energy demand in greece have remained unchanged

energy saving in uk fe colleges the relative importance of the socio economic groups and environmental attitudes of employees abstract sustainable development within the educational sector provides an important opportunity to conserve energy and resources however much of the current debate on energy efficiency focuses on new builds or technical measures to adapt established premises the potential to harness the energy saving behaviour of employees is neglected previous research has shown that within the domestic environment participants socio economic characteristics and environmental attitudes are strongly linked to their propensity to make energy savings and promote energy conservation the objectives of this research are to examine whether these same principles could be applied to a business environment in particular the educational sector this research focused on staff at a typical college of further education in the uk two questionnaires were used as the most appropriate research tool for this investigation this analysis is based on data from 330 employees at a further educational college in staffordshire the results indicate that energy saving behaviour is important across a wide sector of variables with home owner status social altruism and home installation of green measures determining people s views and opinions although the results have made positive correlation the analysis also exposed the need for a major change in the patterns of human behaviour towards environmentally sustainable alignment data from staff who did not want to take part in the surveys was also analysed for motivations and reasons recommendations were made for further study in this sector

voluntary simplicity lifestyles and energy conservation this paper presents a behavioral index for measuring an individual s tendency towards a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity characterized by ecological awareness attempts to become more self sufficient and efforts to decrease personal consumption of goods the index is shown to predict energy conservation and intention to purchase solar equipment

estimating energy conservation patterns of greek households abstract this paper develops an empirical model to investigate the main determinants of household energy conservation patterns in greece employing cross section data in the empirical analysis household energy conserving choices models are employed using a discrete and a latent trait variable respectively as a dependent variable the results show that socio economic variables such as consumers income and family size are suitable to explain differences towards energy conservation preferences in addition the results suggest that electricity expenditures and age of the respondent are negatively associated with the number of energy conserving actions that a consumer is willing to adopt finally other variables such as environmental information feedback and consciousness of energy problems are characteristics of the energy saver consumer by evaluating consumer s decision making process with regards to energy conservation measures we are able to formulate and propose an effective energy conservation framework for greece an energy policy framework is among the main prerequisites not only to achieve sustainable development but also to maintain consumers quality of life

an econometric analysis of residential expenditures on energy conservation and renewable energy sources abstract economic theory suggests that residential expenditures on energy conservation and renewable energy sources will be determined by the ability of households to purchase conservation inputs their incentive to invest in conserving energy the energy efficiency of existing homes and miscellaneous factors such as climate and age of the home owner empirical analyses of energy related expenditures reported on individual income tax returns confirm the importance of household income energy price increases and climate conditions in determining energy conservation investments income tax credits are also found to have stimulated residential spending on conservation and renewable energy

citizens views on electricity use savings and production from renewable energy sources a case study from a greek island abstract a country s economic growth is closely linked to the availability generation distribution and use of energy at the same time the increased rate of global energy consumption is a risk to development and to the efforts to safeguard people s living standards for the future the production of electricity from res substantially contributes to the energy security of states and to environmental protection greece has a valuable and exploitable potential in several res and can significantly increase their use however various significant institutional changes have taken place in greece over the last decades involving changes to the energy mix the penetration of res and attracting foreign investment the present research took place on the island of andros greece with the help of a questionnaire and face to face interviews it is noted that the respondents agree with the need to save energy and to expand the use of green energy they say they are slightly satisfied by the messages given through the mass media they have insufficient information regarding res systems that can be used in households and believe that a major subsidy from the state would lead to their purchase

optimal sticky prices under rational inattention this paper presents a model in which price setting firms decide what to pay attention to subject to a constraint on information flow when idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to aggregate conditions when we calibrate the model to match the large average absolute size of price changes observed in micro data prices react fast and by large amounts to idiosyncratic shocks but only slowly and by small amounts to nominal shocks nominal shocks have strong and persistent real effects we use the model to investigate how the optimal allocation of attention and the dynamics of prices depend on the firms environment jel e 3 e5 d8

the language effect in international trade a meta analysis abstract gravity models of international trade have been frequently applied to estimate the impact of common official or spoken language on bilateral trade this study provides a meta analysis based on 701 language effects collected from 81 academic articles on average a common official or spoken language increases trade flows directly by 44

understanding consumer animosity in an international crisis nature antecedents and consequences the nature antecedents and consequences of consumer animosity during the 1997 asian economic crisis are investigated based on a large scale survey of 2000 adult consumers representative of five affected nations indonesia malaysia singapore south korea and thailand an animosity model was developed and tested with the us and japan as target countries as predicted stable and situational animosity reduced willingness to buy products from a perceived hostile national entity affective evaluations and cognitive judgments were negatively influenced by situational animosity but not by stable animosity as expected situational animosity was increased by external attribution perceived external control and stable animosity implications of these findings are discussed and directions for future research suggested