Boosting the choice of energy-efficient home appliances: the effectiveness of two types of decision support

Julia E. Blasch, Massimo Filippini, Nilkanth Kumar, Adan L. Martinez-Cruz

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Consumers’ limitations in assessing the lifetime cost of household appliances may sustain the much-cited energy efficiency gap. We analyse the impact of an individual’s energy and investment literacy and two different types of decision support on the ability to identify the appliance with the lower lifetime cost in an online randomized controlled trial among two independently chosen samples of the Swiss population. In a decision task, participants choose between appliances with different lifetime cost. One treatment offers a short education programme on how to calculate the lifetime cost of an appliance – via a set of information slides. The second treatment provides access to an online lifetime-cost calculator tool. We find that pre-treatment energy and investment literacy are positively associated with the probability of identifying the appliance with the lowest lifetime cost. Evidence in this paper suggest that both decision aids boost identification of energy efficient appliances. We discuss strategies to scale up these boosters.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3598-3620
Number of pages23
JournalApplied Economics
Volume54
Issue number31
Early online date18 Jan 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Funding

We are grateful to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) for financial support. SFOE was not responsible for the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data or in the writing of this paper and the content does not necessarily represent the official views of the SFOE. This research is also part of the activities of SCCER CREST, which is financially supported by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI). A preliminary working paper version of this research was titled as “Narrowing the energy efficiency gap: The impact of educational programmes, online support tools and energy-related investment literacy”. We are thankful to all anonymous reviewers whose comments were significantly helpful in improving this work. Feedback from participants of the 2017 IAEE European Conference in Vienna and the research seminar on Economic Behavior and Governance at University of Kassel are also gratefully acknowledged. All omissions and remaining errors are our responsibility. The work was supported by the Bundesamt f?r Energie [SI/501106]. We are grateful to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) for financial support. SFOE was not responsible for the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data or in the writing of this paper and the content does not necessarily represent the official views of the SFOE. This research is also part of the activities of SCCER CREST, which is financially supported by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI). A preliminary working paper version of this research was titled as ?Narrowing the energy efficiency gap: The impact of educational programmes, online support tools and energy-related investment literacy?. We are thankful to all anonymous reviewers whose comments were significantly helpful in improving this work. Feedback from participants of the 2017 IAEE European Conference in Vienna and the research seminar on Economic Behavior and Governance at University of Kassel are also gratefully acknowledged. All omissions and remaining errors are our responsibility.

FundersFunder number
SCCER CREST
Kommission für Technologie und Innovation
Bundesamt für Energie
Universität Kassel

    Keywords

    • Energy efficiency
    • bounded rationality
    • deliberation cost
    • boosting
    • online tools
    • energy and investment literacy

    VU Research Profile

    • Science for Sustainability

    UN SDGs

    This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

    • SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

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