The aim of this research is to understand the role of socioeconomic characteristics and individual preferences in explaining the energy performance gap in the residential sector. This gap reflects the difference between the theoretical energy consumption of homes assessed by engineering models and real energy consumption. Using the ratio of the two consumption amounts to measure the gap, we perform a quantile regression to tease out the effects of preferences on the entire distribution of the energy performance gap spectrum instead of focusing on the conditional average. As a result, this research provides an original contribution: depending on the direction of the gap, our findings suggest that significant drivers include individual preferences for comfort over economy, which explain up to 12% of the gap variability, and poverty. This context should serve as a reminder to public authorities regarding the issues of rebound effect and household welfare.

本研究的目的是了解社会经济特征和个人偏好在解释住宅部门能源绩效差距方面的作用。这一差距反映了工程模型评估的家庭理论能耗与实际能耗之间的差异。使用两个消耗量的比率来衡量差距，我们执行分位数回归来梳理偏好对能源绩效差距谱的整个分布的影响，而不是关注条件平均值。因此，这项研究提供了原始贡献：根据差距的方向，我们的研究结果表明，重要的驱动因素包括个人对舒适度的偏好而不是经济，这可以解释高达 12% 的差距变异性和贫困。