The appeal of the Green Deal: Empirical evidence for the influence of energy efficiency policy on renovating homeowners

Pettifor, Hazel, Wilson, Charlie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8164-3566 and Chrysochoidis, Georgios (2015) The appeal of the Green Deal: Empirical evidence for the influence of energy efficiency policy on renovating homeowners. Energy Policy, 79. pp. 161-176. ISSN 0301-4215

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Abstract

The Green Deal is a major new energy policy designed to support the diffusion of energy efficiency measures in UK homes. This paper provides one of the first empirical examinations of the Green Deal’s success in influencing homeowners’ renovation decisions. Using a repeated measures design in which households were questioned before and after the Green Deal’s launch in January 2013, we assess the policy’s success in raising awareness of energy efficiency. In particular, we test the effectiveness of the Green Deal’s positioning to overcome barriers to renovation among homeowners already interested in or considering energy efficiency measures. Using the innovation decision process (Rogers 2003) as a conceptual framing of the renovation decision process, we examine whether new information on energy efficiency provided by the Green Deal strengthened intentions and its antecedents. We find that (1) energy efficiency is of potential appeal to all renovators regardless of their attitudes about energy efficiency, (2) energy efficiency opportunities need to be identified in the early stages of renovation when homeowners are thinking about ways to improve their home, and (3) homeowners’ intentions towards energy efficiency are weakened by uncertainty about financial benefits, helping to explain the relatively slow uptake of the Green Deal to-date.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is an open access article published under a CC BY licence.
Uncontrolled Keywords: the green deal,home renovations,energy efficiency,sdg 7 - affordable and clean energy ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/affordable_and_clean_energy
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups: University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 27 Jan 2015 09:54
Last Modified: 14 Jun 2023 12:02
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/51740
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2015.01.015

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