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Environmental Motivations Behind Individuals’ Daily Energy Saving Behaviour: Evidence from Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium

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Behavioural Economics of Climate Change

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Climate Studies ((BRIEFSCLIMATE))

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Abstract

The impact of environmental motivations on the individual’s decisions regarding the adoption of energy-saving habits are analysed on the basis of a representative online survey carried out in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Various daily energy-saving activities are considered. Accounting for endogeneity in the basic estimation model, the subject’s experience with extreme weather events are used as an instrument for environmental motivations. This study provides empirical evidence that apart from the Belgian sub-sample, where environmental motivations are either nonsignificant or even decrease the probability of performing daily energy-saving behaviour, almost all types of daily-energy saving behaviours are positively associated with environmental motivations among the German and Dutch respondents. The findings suggest that policy programmes aimed at raising environmental awareness and forming pro-environmental motivations can lead to an increase in daily energy-saving activities in Germany and the Netherlands.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Instrumental variable analysis is a method of estimation that is widely used in many economic applications when correlation between the explanatory variables and the error term is suspected.

  2. 2.

    It can be argued that the variable measuring extreme weather events is unsuitable to be used as an instrumental variable as it stems from the same survey as all other data and is thus indirectly linked to the energy efficiency measures. While this argument holds, it can be argued that the bias resulting from all variables coming from the same survey is rather small as weather events per se are exogenous and identical for interviewees and non-interviewees, and only their classification as ‘extreme’ might result in any bias at all. However, as this variable remains the most suitable variable available and does not report any significant correlation even considering sub-samples its bias is considered to be negligible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

    Vladimir Udalov

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  1. Vladimir Udalov
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Udalov, V. (2019). Environmental Motivations Behind Individuals’ Daily Energy Saving Behaviour: Evidence from Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium. In: Behavioural Economics of Climate Change. SpringerBriefs in Climate Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03532-7_4

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