an integral evaluation of dieselisation policies for households cars abstract reducing energy consumption and co 2 emissions in the transport sector is a priority for great britain and other european countries as part of their agreements made in the kyoto protocol and the voluntary agreement to achieve these goals it has been proposed to increase the market share of diesel vehicles which are more efficient than petrol ones based on partial approaches previous research concluded that increasing the share of diesel vehicles will decrease co 2 emissions see al hinti et al 2007 jeong et al 2009 zervas 2006 unlike these approaches i use an integral approach based on discrete choice models to analyse diesel vehicle penetration in a broader context of transport in great britain i provide for the first time empirical evidence which is in line with bonilla s 2009 argument that only improvements in vehicle efficiency will not be enough to achieve their goals of mitigation of energy consumption and co 2 emissions the model shows the technical limitations that the penetration of diesel vehicles faces and that a combination of improvements in public transportation and taxes on fuel prices is the most effective policy combination to reduce the total amount of energy consumption and co 2 emissions among the analysed dieselisation polices

household preferences of hybrid home heating systems a choice experiment application abstract the residential heating sector presents considerable energy savings potential as numerous heating solutions for reducing electricity consumption and utilizing renewable energy sources are available in the market the aim of this paper is to examine determinants of household heating system choices and to use this information for policy planning purposes this paper investigates residential homeowner attitudes regarding innovative hybrid home heating systems hhhs with choice experiment heating system scenarios are designed to represent the most relevant primary and supplementary heating alternatives currently available in finland the choice sets include six main heating alternatives district heat solid wood wood pellet electric storage heating ground heat pump and exhaust air heat pump that are described by five attributes supplementary heating systems investment costs operating costs comfort of use and environmental friendliness the results imply that hhhss generally appear to be accepted among households however several factors affect perceptions of these technologies the results reveal differing household attitudes toward the main heating alternatives and show that such views are affected by socio demographic characteristics age living environment education etc the results suggest that households view supplementary heating systems especially solar based favorably the other attributes studied also play a significant role in decision making

measuring climatic impacts on energy consumption a review of the empirical literature abstract this paper reviews the literature on the relationship between climate and the energy sector in particular we primarily discuss empirical papers published in peer reviewed economics journals focusing on how climate affects energy expenditures and consumption climate will affect energy consumption by changing how consumers respond to short run weather shocks the intensive margin as well as how people will adapt in the long run the extensive margin along the intensive margin further research that uses household and firm level panel data of energy consumption may help identify how energy consumers around the world respond to weather shocks research on technology adoption e g air conditioners will further our understanding of the extensive margin adjustments and their costs we also note that most of the literature focuses on the residential sector similar studies are urgently needed for the industrial and commercial sectors

the structure of energy efficiency investment in the uk households and its average monetary and environmental savings abstract socioeconomic and behavioural variables that influence the household s adoption of energy efficiency measures such as cavity and loft insulation and upgrades to the boiler are identified contrary to previous literature by extending brechling and smith s 1994 and hassett and metcalf s 1995 models it is shown that the application of the energy act 2011 which contains provisions on the green deal the new energy company obligation eco and the private rented sector needs to follow a tailored strategy to reach the low adoption households identified by my model moreover for the current adopters of the analysed measures average monetary and environmental adoption benefits are estimated based on parti and parti s 1980 demand model these estimates are smaller than their expected values showing an important energy efficiency gap in the sector particularly low cost measures can bring important savings that can help to meet the pay as you save rule i e the golden rule of the new regulation my model also shows that a poor state of dwelling repair can reduce the adoption benefits increasing the need of subsidies that will be financed through consumer s energy bills however this can increase the number of households in fuel poverty

modeling climate feedbacks to electricity demand the case of china this paper is an empirical investigation of the effects of climate on the use of electricity by consumers and producers in urban and rural areas within china it takes advantage of an unusual combination of temporal and regional data sets in order to estimate temperature as well as price and income elasticities of electricity demand the estimated positive temperature electric power feedback implies a continually increasing use of energy to produce electric power which in china is primarily based on coal in the absence of countervailing measures this will contribute to increased emissions increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and increases in greenhouse warming

deficits government expenditures and tax smoothing in the united states 1929 1988 abstract barro s tax smoothing hypothesis tsh implies that the government runs a budget deficit whenever it anticipates the growth rate of national income to increase or the growth rate of its expenditure to decline we test this implication of the hypothesis by examining the implied cross equation restrictions on a vector autoregression var model using u s data for the period ranging from 1929 to 1988 our formal tests reject the hypothesis for the full sample period but cannot reject it for the post 1947 period further investigations show that the statistical rejection should be attributed to sharp differences in the statistical properties of the pre 1947 and the post 1947 data rather than the failure of the hypothesis itself

heating technology and energy use a discrete continuous choice approach to norwegian household energy demand abstract the aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the household s energy demand as a discrete continuous choice and on this basis establish an econometric model suitable for the data available in the norwegian energy surveys the discrete appliance choice is specified as a multinomial logit model with a mixture of appliance attributes operating costs and individual characteristics income housing unit characteristics etc as explanatory variables in the next step the continuous choice of energy use is modelled conditional on the appliance choice the energy prices turn out to be significant both when estimating the appliance choice and the conditional energy demand the estimated price elasticity for energy exceeds minus unity the paper discusses how this relatively strong price response should be interpreted in the context of other econometric analysis with no explicit appliance dependence finally the significance of the many household characteristics at both stages of the model signals a high degree of heterogeneity within the households which justifies the use of detailed micro data in the modelling of the energy demand

household biomass energy choice and its policy implications on improving rural livelihoods in sichuan china abstract it is widely known that a switch from traditional biomass energy to modern clean safe and efficient energy could improve local rural livelihoods by enhancing the access to high quality energy and reducing the negative impacts of traditional biomass energy on health environment and living standards hence in this paper we used alternative specific conditional logit model asclm to examine the rural household energy choice behaviors in sichuan province of china from the perspective of revealed and stated preferences the results show that the fuel switching in our study region is not a simple unidirectional process from traditional biomass energy to modern fuels as incomes improve household energy choice behaviors could be not only affected by energy specific characteristics such as fuel price smoky level and safety risk but also influenced by household specific factors such as income level age and educational level of the decision maker household demographic structure number of people frequently eating at home distance to the nearest biomass collecting spot and household location suggesting that government should attach more importance to simultaneously improve energy quality control energy price and enhance household socio economic status

replacement or additional purchase the impact of energy efficient appliances on household electricity saving under public pressures abstract this study examined the influence of additional and replacement purchases of energy efficient air conditioners on power savings we used a questionnaire survey and measured electricity use data from 339 japanese households collected from two city areas with different level of government requested electricity saving rates namely osaka 10 and matsuyama 5 the main findings of our study are as follows 1 households that purchased energy efficient air conditioners saved more electricity than those that did not 2 additional purchase households showed significant energy savings whereas replacement households did not the rebound effect may negate the energy saving effects of a new air conditioner 3 altruistic attitude is associated with more active participation in power saving 4 households in osaka saved more electricity than those in matsuyama probably because the government call to save electricity was more forceful

motivational factors influencing the homeowners decisions between residential heating systems an empirical analysis for germany heating demand accounts for a large fraction of the overall energy demand of private households in germany a better understanding of the adoption and diffusion of energy efficient and renewables based residential heating systems rhs is of high policy relevance particularly against the background of climate change security of energy supply and increasing energy prices in this paper we explore the multi dimensionality of the homeowners motivation to decide between competing rhs a questionnaire survey n 2440 conducted in 2010 among homeowners who had recently installed a rhs provides the empirical foundation principal component analysis shows that 25 items capturing different adoption motivations can be grouped around six dimensions 1 cost aspects 2 general attitude towards the rhs 3 government grant 4 reactions to external threats i e environmental or energy supply security considerations 5 comfort considerations and 6 influence of peers moreover a cluster analysis with the identified motivational factors as segmentation variables reveals three adopter types 1 the convenience oriented 2 the consequences aware and 3 the multilaterally motivated rhs adopter finally we show that the influence of the motivational factors on the adoption decision also differs by certain characteristics of the homeowner and features of the home

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

an approach for developing an optimal discount pricing policy this paper addresses the problem of why and how a seller should develop a discount pricing structure even if such a pricing structure does not alter ultimate demand the situation modeled is most appropriate where the seller s product does not represent a major component of the buyer s final product where the demand for the product is derived or where the price is only one of many factors considered in making a purchase decision a model of buyer reaction to any given pricing scheme is developed to show that there exists a unified pricing policy which motivates the buyer to increase its ordering quantity per order thereby reducing the joint buyer and seller ordering and holding costs as a result the seller is able to reduce its costs while leaving the buyer no worse off and often better off the model is extended to handle variable ordering and shipping costs and situations where the seller faces numerous groups of buyers each having different ordering policies finally a case study is presented explicitly showing how the proposed pricing policy can be applied to the situation of a large seller selling to a number of different buyer groups

residential energy demand for space heating in the nordic countries accounting for interfuel substitution abstract reliable estimation of fuel consumption in residential sector is crucial for the future development of fuel supply system three approaches are compared in this study to capture climate impact as well as and interfuel substitution between fuels on residential fuel consumption for space heating in the nordic countries the first approach aims at directly estimating the demand for each energy carrier as a function of explanatory variables including heating degree days fuels price and gdp per capita the second approach is a two stage model combing an econometric model for total energy use for space heating and the market share for energy carriers based on cross price elasticities while in the third approach a set of simultaneous equations models were estimated based on the results of the mean average error and root mean square error criteria for three approaches across the nordic countries it was found that the second and third approaches were able to capture the complementary and substitution effects between fuels this finding confirms our hypothesis that the interfuel substitution is a key factor for estimating changes in fuel demand and should be accounted for when residential energy demand is projected the results additionally have important implications for climate change policy by exploring the impact of fuel price on residential energy demand for space heating

climate change adaptation a study of fuel choice and consumption in the us energy sector abstract using cross sectional data this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas oil and other fuels they also use more energy climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating on net american energy expenditures will likely increase resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise for example if the us warms by 5 c by 2100 we predict annual welfare losses of 57 billion

an econometric analysis of residential consumption of fuelwood in a mountainous prefecture of northern greece abstract biomass is a renewable energy source of increasing importance especially since the energy policies of countries today are largely focused on renewable energy it is a renewable energy source with significant potential to contribute to the energy needs of modern society both for developing and developed countries around the world one very important source of biomass is wood and fuelwood in particular this article aims at providing an empirical analysis of household fuelwood consumption and the determinants of the choice to use the specific energy for heating and cooking in a district of northern greece in the current empirical analysis several household fuelwood consumption models are employed such as glm tobit and heckman regression based techniques the results show that household sociological and economical characteristics as well as more general environmental issues are suitable to explain differences towards fuelwood consumption for space heating and cooking we additionally evaluate the household fuelwood consumption for heating through the statistical analyses conducted

determinants of households space heating type a discrete choice analysis for german households abstract considering the increasing attention on efficient use of energy it becomes vitally important to understand the energy related behavior of households this article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the space heating technology applied by a household three sets of variables are examined as potential influences building socio economic and regional characteristics to highlight both the differences and similarities the results are obtained from a sample of house owners and from a sample including all households the influence of socio economic factors is similar across these groups income is found to exert only a minor impact on the system choice dwelling features are significant in determining the heating type particularly in the sample including all households regional effects are important clear differences prevail between east and west germany

current accounts in the euro area an intertemporal approach abstract current accounts have diverged substantially among euro area countries since the creation of the euro this divergence has raised concerns about the sustainability of some member countries external indebtedness this paper uses an intertemporal model of the current account to analyze the fluctuations in current account balances experienced by euro area countries over the last three decades and to disentangle its determinants we find that the model is not rejected for six of the ten euro area countries examined belgium france italy netherlands portugal and spain although it tends to underestimate their current account volatility for these countries we derive the expectations about future income and relative prices which according to the model underlie their current account balances expectations about future growth increased in all southern european countries at the creation of the euro but they diverged considerably by 2005 while in portugal these expectations were below its historical mean by then in spain they were at an historical high

estimation of residential electricity demand function in seoul by correction for sample selection bias abstract this paper attempts to estimate the residential electricity demand function in seoul to this end we collected the data from a survey of households in seoul and employed the bivariate model to rectify the undesirable impacts of non response data the results show that the size of family the size of house dummy for having a plasma display panel television dummy for having an air conditioner and the household s income have positive relationships with the residential electricity demand on the other hand electricity price contributes negatively to the residential electricity demand in addition the price and income elasticities were estimated as 0 2463 and 0 0593 respectively implying that residential electricity demand in seoul is price and income inelastic such useful information is expected to help policy makers regulate the residential electricity supply and predict the effect of the price on the residential electricity demand in the future

the ex post impact of an energy tax on household energy demand this paper presents an econometric study dealing with household demand for energy in the netherlands the main objective of the paper is to present an estimation of the actual impact of an already implemented energy tax introduced in the netherlands in 1996 the approach differs from the existing literature in that 1 it uses panel data for the same period in which the tax was introduced and 2 it estimates a demand function that controls for a large set of variables such as outside temperature type of house and of house insulation household cooking behavior and an extensive number of durable goods and electrical appliances the study concludes that in the short term the energy tax had a small but significant impact on energy consumption in the netherlands concretely the yearly average demand reduction was of 8 for electricity and 4 4 for gas additionally the influence of variables other than price and income on household energy demand is discussed using this information the impact that the energy tax had on household energy use can be compared with the energy reduction that could have been achieved when using other policy instruments

consumer choice on ecologically efficient water heaters marketing strategy and policy implications in japan abstract this study examines how consumers select ecologically efficient water heaters in japan energy conservation in household water heating is increasingly important for reducing an amount of co 2 emission because the share of water heating in household energy consumption is approximately 30 recently japanese households have widely used ecologically efficient electric heat pump water heaters eco cute or gas fired water heaters eco jozu the total number of such efficient water heaters sold in japan was more than 2 5 million at the end of 2008 this study investigates various factors and impacts of marketing strategy for promoting the appliances in japan we apply mixed and nested logit models to a disaggregated choice data on water heaters from 2004 to 2008 this study considers retail energy prices a government financial support and marketing activities as important factors for appliance selection in addition we consider consumers housing attributes such as floor space and age of building this empirical study finds two business implications one of the two implications is that an increase in an energy price may enhance a choice probability of eco cute and eco jozu because a price increase invites consumer s consciousness on energy conservation so that a cost reduction on energy consumption becomes essential in a use of the efficient appliances the other implication is that marketing activities especially by recommendations from sales representatives and or housing suppliers are important for consumer behaviors the other important findings are discussed in this study this business experience in japan is useful to the other countries where ecologically efficient water heaters are not popular at the current moment

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

electricity prices and consumers long term technology choices evidence from heating investments abstract this paper studies consumers s sensitivity to energy costs at the moment of making a long term energy technology investment the analysis exploits local variation in regulated electricity distribution prices that are persistent over time and therefore a good measure of long term price expectations price impacts are estimated on extensive administrative registry data of private persons acting as home builders in finland during 2006 2011 the results show that electricity prices notably influence builders choices and that electricity tax increases have induced demand for technologies based on renewable energy the results on the comprehensive set of individual level characteristics reveal that technology choices vary systematically across households current dwelling status and the education level have the strongest influence on the choice probabilities price sensitivity is found to be lower for low income households and to vary by the current dwelling status and type of building location

household electricity and gas consumption for heating homes energy consumption has been drastically changed because of energy source depletion price fluctuations development and penetration of alternative energy sources and government policies household energy sources are interrelated and energy price and household characteristics such as income level and dwelling size affect the usage to supply energy consistently and achieve a balance between production and consumption stakeholders must understand consumer energy consumption behavior therefore this study identifies household heating energy usage patterns and the substitutive and or complementary relationships between electricity and gas based on a multiple discrete continuous extreme value model household utility structure is identified from data on gas heating usage results show greater utility and the smallest satiation values for gas boilers than for electric heaters and electric heating beds the effects of consumer socioeconomic and environmental characteristics on the choice of heating energy sources were analyzed also for further comparison the respondents were split into high and low categories for income heating degree days dwelling size and gas usage gas was found to be the most economical heating choice for households

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

promotion and fast food demand many believe that fast food promotion is a significant cause of the obesity epidemic in north america industry members argue that promotion only reallocates brand shares and does not increase overall demand we study the effect of fast food promotion on market share and total demand by estimating a discrete continuous model of fast food restaurant choice and food expenditure that explicitly accounts for both spatial and temporal determinants of demand estimates are obtained using a unique panel of canadian fast food consumers the results show that promotion primarily increases demand and has a smaller effect on restaurant market shares

rivalry in price and variety among supermarket retailers recent theoretical models of retail competition suggest that product heterogeneity is critical to retail price and variety strategies this article provides empirical evidence on supermarket retailers price and variety strategies using a nested constant elasticity of substitution nces modeling framework the model is estimated using chain level scanner data for four major grocery chains in a large urban west coast market the results show that retailers compete for market share using both price and variety while they all tend to follow moderately cooperative pricing strategies the extent to which they follow cooperative strategies in variety is less homogeneous

households energy consumption and transition toward cleaner energy sources the paper investigates the factors influencing households energy choices and the drivers of switching toward cleaner energy we first present a theoretical framework to determine the factors that explain households energy consumption and highlight the motivations underlying their transition towards less polluting sources including their environmental preference using french household data from ademe we provide an econometric test of qualitative variables following studies by dubin and mcfadden 1984 our results show that income and prices are the main determinants of household energy consumption environmental considerations seem to influence the choice of energy sources more than consumption we also find evidence that income and relative capital cost are the most important variables for household energy switching

household energy choices and fuelwood consumption an econometric approach using french data this study proposes an econometric analysis of household fuelwood demand in france the choice concerning the energy used for heating is modeled stressing the combination between one type of energy used as a main source and another one used as a back up this endogenous decision has an impact on fuelwood consumption and is taken into account to avoid biased estimates of price and income elasticities the results show that the choice of energy mix is determined by the income and the socio economic characteristics of households and that fuelwood consumption is price sensitive in the case where wood is the main source of energy