Renewable energy adoption in an ageing population: Heterogeneity in preferences for micro-generation technology adoption
By K. Willis, Riccardo Scarpa, Rose Gilroy, Neveen Hamza. 2011
182 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Many countries are endeavouring to supply more of their energy from renewable resources. Such countries are also experiencing an aging population with a greater proportion of people aged â¥65 years. This demographic shift may reduce the uptake of renewable energy, if older person households are less inclined to accept change and adopt new technologies. This paper assesses whether such households have different behavioural responses to energy efficiency compared to the rest of society and investigates whether micro-generation renewable energy technologies are less likely to be adopted by these households. It uses conditional logit and mixed logit models to investigate the impact of age of household on primary heating adoption, and also to assess the impact of older households on the installation of discretionary micro-generation technologies (solar thermal, solar voltaic, and wind power) to supplement existing heating and lighting systems. Results indicate that primary heating choice is not affected but that older person households are less inclined to adopt micro-generation technologies.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/999af7df0011470c3ee9de94ecd05aa71679e22a
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In Economics and Econometrics
- John M. Rose
- Riccardo Scarpa
- M. Thiene
- Michele Moretto
- R. Cavalli
- Cristiano Franceschinis
- Stephane Hess
- David A. Hensher
In Pollution
In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Citations in the corpus
- Determinants of households’ investment in energy efficiency and renewables: evidence from the OECD survey on household environmental behaviour and attitudes (2015, background): “Sardianou and Genoudi (2013) find that middle-aged people are more likely to invest in RES than younger people and Willis et al (2011) suggest that households with members older than 65 years are less likely to adopt solar technologies compared to the rest of the population.”
- Adoption of renewable heating systems: An empirical test of the diffusion of innovation theory (2017, result): “Our results show the importance of investment and operating costs and are consistent with the findings of earlier studies [12], [13], [15], [83], [84], that have emphasized the relevance of economic factors in the choice of heating system and microgeneration technology.”