The Power-Saving Behavior of Households: How Should We Encourage Power Saving?

Kenichi Mizobuchi
Department of Economics, Matsuyama University, Japan

Hisashi Tanizaki
Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, Japan

Series: Green Research, Developments, and Programs
BISAC: BUS051000

Clear

$95.00

Volume 10

Issue 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Special issue: Resilience in breaking the cycle of children’s environmental health disparities
Edited by I Leslie Rubin, Robert J Geller, Abby Mutic, Benjamin A Gitterman, Nathan Mutic, Wayne Garfinkel, Claire D Coles, Kurt Martinuzzi, and Joav Merrick

eBook

Digitally watermarked, DRM-free.
Immediate eBook download after purchase.

Product price
Additional options total:
Order total:

Quantity:

Wishlist
Wishlist
ISBN: N/A Categories: , , , , , , Tags: , ,

Details

This book is about the empirical analysis of household electricity saving behavior. In particular, we focus on effective methods to promote energy saving behavior and the effectiveness of energy-saving equipment. After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, 52 of Japan’s nuclear power plants temporarily stopped. Prior to the Fukushima accident, about 25% of Japan’s total electricity supply amount depended on nuclear power. Therefore, the resulting power shortage has become a serious problem, especially in summer and winter. In this document, the authors focus on several policy instruments that encourage energy saving behavior such as economic incentive (increase in electricity price and compensation), public electricity saving request, comparative feedback, social norms, and verify their effect. Furthermore, the authors will conduct a quantitative economic analysis based on these data sets using randomly obtained data as well as summary data announced after 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The authors then examine how households respond to policy measures to save electricity. The result of this book is to clarify to what extent the power saving policy targeted at homes was effective, and it is useful for considering what kind of policy measures (including a mixed policy) should be adopted according to future goals. The authors especially recommend this book to researchers and environmental energy policy-makers, but also target readers interested in Japan’s energy saving issues.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Why Do Japanese Households Need Power-Saving Behavior?

Chapter 2. Estimation of the Demand System Model of the Japanese Household Sector: Have There Been Structural Changes in Energy Demand Elasticities during the Great East Japan Earthquake?

Chapter 3. The Effects of Public Pressure on Power Saving

Chapter 4. Field Experiment 1: The Effect of a Stepwise Reward: The Effect of Economic Incentive to Conserve Electricity

Chapter 5. Field Experiment 2: The Effect of Continuous Reward: The Effect of Economic and Psychological Factors on Energy-Saving Behavior

Chapter 6. Field Experiment 3: The Effect of Energy-Saving Investment: The Electricity-Saving Effect from the Replacement of Air Conditioner

Chapter 7. Summary and Conclusion: Directions for Future Power-Saving Policies

Acknowledgments

References

About the Authors

Index

Abrahamse, W., Steg, L., Vlek, C., Rothengatter, T., 2005. A review of intervention studies aimed at household energy conservation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 273-291.
Allcott, Hunt. 2011. “Social Norms and Energy Conservation.” Journal of Public Economics 95:1082–1095.
Alston Julian M, Foster Kenneth A, Green Richard D. 1994. “Estimating Elasticities with the Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand System: Some Monte Carlo Results.” Review of Economics and Statistics 76 (22):351-356.
Arikawa, Hiroshi., Cao, Yang., and Matsumoto, Sigeru. 2014. “Attitudes about Nuclear Power and Energy-saving Behavior Among Japanese Households.” Energy Research and Social Science 2: 12–20.
Becker, Lawrence J. 1978. “Joint Effect of Feedback and Goal Setting on Performance: A Field Study of Residential Energy Conservation.” Journal of Applied Psychology 63:428–433.
Brandon, Gwendolyn, and Alan Lewis. 1999. “Reducing Household Energy Consumption: A Qualitative and Quantitative Field Study.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19:75–85.
Buse, Adolf. 1994. “Evaluating the Linearized Almost Ideal Demand System.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 76(4):781–793.
Buse, Adolf. 1998. “Testing Homogeneity in the Linearized Almost Ideal Demand System.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 80(1):208–220.
Buse, Adolf, and Wing Chan H. 2000. “Invariance, Price Indices and Estimation in Almost Ideal Demand Systems.” Empirical Economics 25(3):519–539.
Clark, Christopher F., Matthew J. Kotchen, and Michael R. Moore. 2003. “Internal and External Influences on Pro-environmental Behavior: Participation in a Green Electricity Program.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 23:237–246.
Deaton, Angus, and John Muellbauer. 1980. “An Almost Ideal Demand System.” American Economic Review 70:312–326.
Davis, Lucas W. 2008. “Durable Goods and Residential Demand for Energy and Water: Evidence from a Field Trial.” RAND Journal of Economics 39: 530–546.
Davis, Lucas W., Alan Fuchs, and Paul Gertler. 2014. “Cash for Coolers: Evaluating a Large-Scale Appliance Replacement Program in Mexico,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6(4): 207–238.
Deci, Edward L. 1971. “Effects of Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 18:105–115.
Deci, Edward L., Richard Koestner, and Richard M. Ryan. 1999. “A Meta-analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin 125:627–668.
Dubin, Jeffrey A., Allen K. Miedema, and Ram V. Chandran. 1986. “Price Effects of Energy-efficient Technologies: A Study of Residential Demand for Heating and Cooling.” RAND Journal of Economics 17: 310–325.
EDMC. 2015. Handbook of Energy & Economic Statistics. The Institute of Energy Economics, Quantitative Analysis Unit, Tokyo, Japan (in Japanese).
Efron, Bradley, and Tibshirani, Robert, J. 1993. An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Monographs on Statistics and Applied Probability. CHAPMAN&HALL/CRC.
Ek, Kristina, and Patrik Soderholm. 2008. “Norms and Economic Motivation in the Swedish Green Electricity Market.” Ecological Economics 68:169–182.
Ek, K., Soderholm, P., 2010. The devil is in the details: Household electricity saving behavior and the role of information. Energy Policy, 38, 1578-1587.
Electricity Supply and Demand Verification Subcommittee. 2013. “Electricity Supply and Demand Verification Subcommittee Report.” (in Japanese) http://www.meti.go.jp/committee/
sougouenergy/sougou/jukyu_kensho/pdf/report01_02_00.pdf.
Feenstra, Robert C., and Marshall B. Reinsdorf. 2000. “An Exact Price Index for the Almost Ideal Demand System.” Economics Letters 66:159–162.
Filippini, Massimo. 1995. “Electricity Demand by Time of Use: An Application of the Household AIDS Model.” Energy Economics 17(3):197–204.
Fitzenberger, Bernd. 1997. “The Moving Blocks Bootstrap and Robust Inference for Linear Least Squares and Quantile Regressions.” Journal of Econometrics 82:235–287.
Freedman, David A., and Stephen Peters C. 1984. “Bootstrapping a Regression Equation: Some Empirical Results.” Journal of American Statistical Association 79(385):97–106.
Frey, Bruno S., and Reto Jegen. 2001. “Motivation Crowding Theory.” Journal of Economic Surveys 15:589–611.
Fujimi, Toshio, and Stephanie E. Chang. 2014. “Adaptation to Electricity Crisis: Businesses in the 2011 Great East Japan Triple Disaster.” Energy Policy 68: 447–457.
Goldman, Charles A., Joseph H. Eto, and Galen L. Barbose. 2002. “California Customer Load Reductions during the Electricity Crisis – Did they Help Keep the Lights On?” Ernst Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory LBNL-49733,
http://emp.lbl.gov/
sites/all/files/lbnl%20-%2049733.pdf.
Green, Richard, David Rocke, and William Hahn. 1987. “Standard Errors for Elasticities: A Comparison of Bootstrap and Asymptotic Standard Errors.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 5(1):145–149.
Green, Richard, and Julian Alston M. 1991. “Elasticities in AIDS Models: A Clarification and Extension.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 73(4):874–875.
Greene, William H. 2008. Econometric Analysis. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Hahn, William F. 1994. “Elasticities in AIDS Models: Comments.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 76:972–977.
Hashimoto, Noriko, 2004. Changing Japanese Society and Behavior of Household Consumption: Analysis with the AIDS Model. Osaka: Kansai University Publishing (in Japanese).
Jeroen, C. J. M., and van den Bergh. 2008. “Environmental Regulation of Households: An Empirical Review of Economic and Psychological Factors.” Ecological Economics 66:559–574.
Joskow, Paul L., and Donald B. Marron. 1992. “What Does a Negawatt Really Cost? Evidence from Utility Conservation Programs.” Energy Journal 13: 41–74.
Kansai Electric Power Company. 2014. “About the Power Situation this Summer.” (in Japanese) http://www.kepco.co.jp/corporate/pr/2014/
__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/08/28/0828_1j.pdf.
Kotchen, Matthew J., and Michael R. Moore. 2007. “Private Provision of Environmental Public Goods: Household Participation in Green-electricity Programs.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 53:1–16.
Krinsky, Itzhak, and A. L. Robb. 1991. “Three Methods for Calculating the Statistical Properties of Elasticities: A Comparison.” Empirical Economics 16(2):199–209.
Künsch, Hans R. 1989. “The Jackknife and the Bootstrap for General Stationary Observations.” Annals of Statistics 17: 1217–1241.

Leighty, Wayne, and Alan Meier. 2011 “Accelerated Electricity Conservation in Juneau, Alaska: A Study of Household Activities that Reduced Demand 25%.” Energy Policy 39(5): 2299–2309.
Liu, Regina Y., and Singh, Kesar. 1992. “Moving Blocks Jackknife and Bootstrap Capture Weak Dependence.” In: Exploring the Limits of the Bootstrap, edited by Lepage R and Billiard L, 224–248. New York: Wiley.
MacKinnon, James G. 2006. “Bootstrap Methods in Econometrics.” Economic Record 82:S2–S18.
Matsumoto, Shigeru. 2015. Environmental Subsidies to Consumers –How Did They Work in the Japanese Market? Rondon and New York: Routledge.
McClelland, Lou, and Stuart W. Cook. 1980. “Promoting Energy Conservation in Master-metered Apartment through Group Financial Incentives.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 10 (1):20–31.
Midden, Cees J. H., Joanne F. Meter, Mieneke H. Weenig, and Henk J. A. Zieverink. 1983. “Using Feedback, Reinforcement and Information to Reduce Energy Consumption in Households: A Field-experiment.” Journal of Economic Psychology 3 (1):65–86.
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. 2013. “Summer Electricity Saving Menu.” (in Japanese) http://www.kansai.meti.go.jp/3-9kaihatsu/electricity/2013_taisaku_katei.pdf.
Mizobuchi, Kenichi. 2008. “An Empirical Study on the Rebound Efect Considering Capital Costs.” Energy Economics 30:2486-2516.
Mizobuchi, Kenichi, and Takeuchi, Kenji. 2012. “Using Economic Incentive to Conserve Electricity Consumption: A Field Experiment in Matsuyama, Japan.” International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy 2(4):318-332.
Mizobuchi, Kenichi., and Takeuchi, Kenji. 2013. “The Influences of Financial and Non-financial Factors on Energy-Saving Behavior: A Field Experiment in Japan.” Energy Policy 63:775-787.
Moschini, Giancarlo. 1995. “Units of Measurement and the Stone Index in Demand System Estimation.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 77:63–68.
Moschini, Giancarlo. 1998. “The Semiflexible Almost Ideal Demand System.” European Economic Review 42:349–364.
Natural Resources and Energy Agency. 2011. “On Measures to Control Electricity Demand this Summer.” (in Japanese) http://www.meti.
go.jp/committee/summary/0002015/014_s02_00.pdf.
Nishio, Kenichiro, and Ofuji, Kenta. 2012. “Actual State of Energy Saving in the Summer of 2011 at Home.” Electric Power Research Institute, (in Japanese) http://criepi.denken.or.jp/jp/kenkikaku/
report/detail/Y11014.html.
Nishio, Kenichiro, and Ofuji, Kenta. 2013. “Actual State of Energy Saving in the Summer of 2012 at Home.” Electric Power Research Institute (in Japanese) http://criepi.denken.or.jp/jp/kenkikaku/
report/detail/Y12026.html.
Nishio, K., and Ofuji, K. 2013. “Ex-post Analysis of Electricity-saving Measures in the Residential Sector in the Summer of 2013” (in Japanese), Tokyo: Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry.
Nishio, Kenichiro, and Ofuji, Kenta. 2014. “Actual State of Energy Saving in the Summer of 2013 at Home,” Electric Power Research Institute (in Japanese) http://criepi.denken.or.jp/jp/kenkikaku/
report/detail/Y13010.html.
Nolan, Jessica M., P. Wesley Schultz, Robert B. Cialdini, B.R, Noah J. Goldstein, and Vladas Griskevicius. 2008. “Normative Social Influence is Underdetected.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34:913–923.
Nyborg, Karine, Richard B. Howarth, and Kjell A. Brekke. 2006. “Green Consumers and Public Policy: On Socially Contingent Moral Motivation.” Resource and Energy Economics 28:351–366.
Ofuji, Kenta, and Nishio, Kenichiro. 2011. “California Supply and Demand Warning FlexAlert and its Evaluation of Power Saving Effect.” Electric Power Research Institute, SERC Discussion Paper (in Japanese) 11019,
http://criepi.denken.or.jp/jp/serc/discussion/
download/11019dp.pdf.
Ofuji, K, and Kimura, O. 2011. “About the 20/20 Electricity Saving Program in California and the Method of Ex-post Evaluation.” Electric Power Research Institute, SERC Discussion Paper
(in Japanese) 11011,
http://criepi.denken.or.jp/jp/serc/discussion/
download/11011dp.pdf.
Okajima, Shigeharu, and Hiroko Okajima. 2013. “Estimation of Japanese Price Elasticities of Residential Electricity Demand, 1990–2007.” Energy Economics 40: 433–440.
Oladosu, Gbadebo. 2003. “An Almost Ideal Demand System Model of Household Vehicle Fuel Expenditure Allocation in the United States.” Energy Journal 24(1):1–21.

Pashardes, Panos. 1993. “Bias in Estimating the Almost Ideal Demand System with the Stone Index Approximation.” Economic Journal 103(419):908–915.
Petersen, John E., Vladislav Shunturov, Kathryn Janda, Gavin Platt, and Kate Weinberger. 2007. “Dormitory Residents Reduce Electricity Consumption when Exposed to Real-time Visual Feedback and Incentives.” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 8:16–33.
Population Statistics. 2009. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. Cited March 29, 2009. http://www.ipss.go.jp/
index-e.asp.
Reiss, Peter C., and Matthew W. White. 2008. “What Changes Energy Consumption? Prices and Public Pressures,” RAND Journal of Economics 39(3): 636–663.
Rosenbaum, Paul R., and Donald D. Rubin. 1983. “The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects.” Biometrika 70: 41–55.
Rossi, Nicola. 1988. “Budget Share Demographic Translation and the Aggregate Almost Ideal Demand System.” European Economic Review 32(6):1301–1318.
Roy, Andrew D. 1951. “Some Thoughts on the Distribution of Earnings.” Oxford Economic Papers 3: 135–145.
Rubin, Donald B. 1974. “Estimating Causal Effects to Treatments in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies.” Journal of Educational Psychology 66: 688–701.
Smith, Vincent H., Michael R. Kehoe, and Mary E. Cremer. 1995. “The Private Provision of Public Goods: Altruism and Voluntary Giving.” Journal of Public Economics 58:107–126.
Sorrell, Steve, and John Dimitropoulos. 2008. “The Rebound Effect: Microeconomic Definitions, Limitations and Extensions.” Ecological Economics 65: 636–649.
Supply and Demand Verification Committee. 2012. “About Follow-up of Electricity Supply and Demand Countermeasures this Summer.” (in Japanese) 
http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/npu/policy09/pdf/
20121012/shiryo3-1-1.pdf.
Tanaka, Makoto, and Takanori Ida. 2013. “Voluntary Electricity Conservation of Households after the Great East Japan Earthquake: A Stated Preference Analysis.” Energy Economics 39: 296–304.
Tanizaki, H., and Mizobuchi, K. 2014. “On Estimation of the AIDS Model using Moving Blocks Bootstrap and Pairs Bootstrap Methods.” Empirical Economics 47(4):1221-1250.
Tiffin, Richard, and Magda Aguiar. 1995. “Bayesian Estimation of an Almost Ideal Demand System for Fresh Fruit in Portugal.” European Review of Agricultural Economics 22:469–480.
Tiffin, Richard, and Kelvin Balcombe. 2005. “Testing Symmetry and Homogeneity in the AIDS with Cointegrated Data using Fully-modified Estimation and the Bootstrap.” Journal of Agricultural Economics 56(2):253–270.

Winett, Richard A., John H. Kagel, Raymond C. Battalio, and Robin C. Winkler. 1978. “Effects of Monetary Rebates, Feedback, and Information on Residential Electricity Conservation.” Journal of Applied Psychology 63:73–80.
Xiao, Ni, Jay Zarnikau, and Paul Damien. 2007. “Testing Functional Forms in Energy Modeling: An Application of the Bayesian Approach to U.S. Electricity Demand.” Energy Economics 29(2):158–166.
Xie, Yu. 2013. “Population Heterogeneity and Causal Inference.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(16): 6262–6268.

You have not viewed any product yet.