Abstract
The residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions, which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy-efficiency (EE) improvements in both emerging and developed countries. Yet, there are several persistent barriers that hinder the attainment of EE improvements in this area. Using data from a 2008 national representative survey of Spanish households, this paper is interested in the determinants of EE-related decisions. In particular, a discrete-choice model empirically analyzes whether pro-environmental households are more likely to invest in EE and to adopt daily energy-saving habits. We show that households with eco-friendly behaviors are more likely to investment in well-differentiated EE measures as well as to steer daily habits towards energy savings. However, no effects are found for households with environmental attitudes based on stated willingness to pay to protect the environment. In addition to this, households belonging to higher income groups and education levels are more likely to invest in EE but not to adopt energy-saving habits; while households with older members are less likely to invest in EE and show fewer eco-friendly habits.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This is a certification system for high-energy efficiency products from the U.S. Green Building Council.
For the climatic zones, we follow the specification used by IDAE (Spanish Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving) in the SECH-SPAHOUSEC project (IDAE 2011). This classifies the country into 3 areas based on maximum, medium and minimum average temperatures along the period 1997–2007. Hence the variable takes values equal to one for North Atlantic, two for Continental and three for Mediterranean areas.
An alternative would be to use a logit model, even though, probit models are generally employed in this type of econometric analysis. The results of both models are very similar, theoretically as well as in our application.
The database indicates that washing machines and fridges exist in most Spanish households. Therefore, computation was facilitated by the use of a trivariate probit model where fridge represented the purchase of appliance.
We have rejected the inclusion of heteroskedasticity in our probit model as an additional robustness check, since a wrong functional form of the variances could lead to worse results.
For the estimation of indoor heating temperatures we exclude the Autonomous Communities of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands given the important climatic differences with respect to the Iberian peninsula.
Based on Figure 2 we construct the reduced sample with those Autonomous Communities with monthly average temperatures below 19 in year 2008, which leads to the exclusion of Andalusia.
References
Ameli N, Brand N (2014) Determinants of households’ investment in energy efficiency and renewables. Evidence from the OECD survey on household environmental behaviour and attitudes. OECD Economics Department working paper 1165
Brechling V, Smith S (1994) Household energy efficiency in the UK. Fiscal Stud 15:44–56
Brounen D, Kok N, Quigley JM (2013) Energy literacy, awareness, and conservation behavior of residential households. Energy Econ 38:42–50
Costa DL, Kahn ME (2010) Why has California’s residential electricity consumption been so flat since the 1980s? NBER working paper 15978
Davis L (2012) Evaluating the slow adoption of energy efficient investment: are renters less likely to have energy efficient appliances? In: Wolfram C, Fullerton D (eds) The design and implementation of U.S. climate policy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Dewees DN, Wilson TA (1990) Cold houses and warm climates revisited: on keeping warm in Chicago or paradox lost. J Polit Econ 98:656–663
Di Maria C, Ferreira S, Lazarova EA (2008) Shedding light on the light bulb puzzle: attitudes and perception. Scott J Polit Econ 57:48–67
Ek K, Söderholm P (2010) The devil is in the details: household electricity saving behavior and the role of information. Energy Policy 38:1578–1587
ESHMA, INE (2010) Encuesta de condiciones de vida 2008. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Madrid
European Commission (2011) Energy efficiency plan. COM 109 final. Brussels
Friedman D (1987) Cold houses in warm climates and vice versa: a paradox or rational heating. J Polit Econ 95:1089–1097
Gago A, Hanemann M, Labandeira X, Ramos A (2013) Climate change, buildings and energy prices. In: Fouquet R (ed) Handbook on energy and climate change. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham
Galarraga I, González-Eguino M, Markandya A (2011a) Willingness to pay and price elasticity of demand for energy-efficient appliances: combining the hedonic approach and demand systems. Energy Econ 33:S66–S74
Galarraga I, Heres DR, González-Eguino M (2011b) Price premium for high-efficiency refrigerators and calculation of price-elasticities for close-substitutes: a methodology using hedonic pricing and demand systems. J Clean Prod 19:2057–2081
Gillingham K, Newell R, Palmer K (2006) Energy efficiency policies: a retrospective examination. Annu Rev Environ Resour 31:161–192
Gillingham K, Newell R, Palmer K (2009) Energy efficiency economics and policy. Annu Rev Environ Resour 1:597–620
Gillingham K, Harding M, Rapson D (2012) Split incentives in residential energy consumption. Energy J 33:37–62
Green C, Tunstall S (1999) A psychological perspective. In: Bateman IJ, Willis KG (eds) Valuing environmental preferences. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Greene WH (2008) Econometric Analysis. Pearson, New York
IDAE (2011) Proyecto SECH_SPAHOUSE: Análisis del consumo energético del sector residencial en España. Instituto para la Diversificación y Ahorro de la Energía, Madrid
IEA (2007) Mind the gap. Quantifying principal-agent problems in energy efficiency, OECD/IEA, Paris
IEA (2013). Transition to sustainable buildings. Strategies and opportunities to 2050. OECD/IEA, Paris
Jaffe AB, Stavins RN (1994) The energy-efficiency gap. What does it mean? Energy Policy 22:804–810
Kahn ME, Vaughn RK (2009) Green market geography: The spatial clustering of hybrid vehicles and LEED registered buildings. BE J Econ Anal Policy 9. doi:10.2202/1935-1682.2030
Kahn ME (2007) Do greens drive hummers or hybrids? Environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice. J Environ Econ Manag 54:129–145
Knack S, Keefer P (1997) Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. Q J Econ 112:1251–1288
Kollmuss A, Agyeman J (2002) Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environ Educ Res 8(3):239–260
Kotchen MJ, Moore MR (2007) Private provision of environmental public goods: household participation in green-electricity programs. J Environ Econ Manag 53:1–16
Lange I, Moro M, Traynor L (2014) Green hypocrisy?: Environmental attitudes and residential space heating expenditure. Ecol Econ 107:76–83
Laustsen J (2008) Energy efficiency requirements in building codes. Energy efficiency policies for new buildings, International Energy Agency, OECD, Paris
Levine M, Ürge-Vorsatz D, Blok K, Geng L, Harvey D, Lang S, Levermore G, Mongameli A, Mirasgedis S, Novikova A, Rilling J, Yoshino H (2007) Residential and commercial buildings. In Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Levinson A, Niemann S (2004) Energy use by apartment tenants when landlords pay for utilities. Resour Energy Econ 26:51–75
Linares P, Labandeira X (2010) Energy efficiency. Economics and policy. J Econ Surv 24:573–592
Löschel A, Sturm B, Vogt C (2013) The demand for climate protection: empirical evidence from Germany. Econ Lett 118:415–418
Loureiro M, Labandeira X, Hanemann M (2013) Transport and low-carbon fuel: a study of public preferences in Spain. Energy Econ 40:S126–S133
Markandya A, Labandeira X, Ramos A (2015) Policy instruments to foster energy efficiency. In: Ansuategi A, Delgado J, Galarraga I (eds) Green energy and efficiency. An economic perspective. Springer, Berlin
Maruejols L, Young D (2011) Split incentives and energy efficiency in Canadian multi-family dwellings. Energy Policy 39:3655–3668
Miller KH, Colantuoni F, Cargo CL (2014) An empirical analysis of residential energy efficiency adoption by housing types and occupancy. Paper presented at the 2014 AAEE Annual Meeting, Minneapolis
Odyssee (2014) Database on energy efficiency indicators. Enerdata, London
OECD (2013) Greening household behaviour: Overview from the 2011 survey. Technical report, OECD, Paris
Owen AL, Videras J (2006) Civic cooperation, pro-environment attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Ecol Econ 58:814–829
Ryan L, Moarif S, Levina E, Baron R (2011) Energy efficiency policy and carbon pricing. IEA Energy Efficiency Series, OECD, Paris
Torgler B, García-Valiñas MA (2007) The determinants of individuals’ attitudes towards preventing environmental damage. Ecol Econ 63:536–552
Ürge-Vorsatz D, Novika A (2008) Potentials and costs of carbon dioxide mitigation in the world’s buildings. Energy Policy 36:642–661
Van den Bergh J (2008) Environmental regulation of households: an empirical review of economic and psychological factors. Ecol Econ 66:559–574
Vassileva I, Wallin F, Dahlquist E (2012) Understanding energy consumption behavior for future demand response strategy development. Energy 46:94–100
Wooldridge JM (2001) Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. MIT Press, Cambridge
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix 1: Summary Statistics
Appendix 2: Regression Results
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ramos, A., Labandeira, X. & Löschel, A. Pro-environmental Households and Energy Efficiency in Spain. Environ Resource Econ 63, 367–393 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9899-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9899-8