Heterogeneity in the effect of home energy audits
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Date
2011-10-25
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Abstract
A longstanding question in the study of energy demand concerns the role
of information as a determinant of home-efficiency improvements. Although the provision of information via home energy audits is frequently asserted to be an effective means for governments to encourage the implementation of efficiency-enhancing renovations,empirical support for this assertion is tenuous at best. Two factors have complicated attempts to measure the effect of audits: first, the nature of the information provided by the audit is typically unobserved, and, second, the response to this information
may vary over households. Using household-level data from Germany, we
address both sources of heterogeneity by estimating a random-parametermodel of four
retrofitting alternatives. In addition to confirming the importance of costs and savings as determinants of renovation choices, our results suggest that the effects of consultancy
vary substantially across households, with some households responding negatively to
the provision of information.
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Keywords
energy audit, mixed logit, random-coefficient models