Based on data of more than 3700 citizens in Germany, this paper empirically examines the relevance of several groups of explanatory factors for electricity consumption. Besides controlling for individual housing and dwelling characteristics as well as socio-demographics, we analyze the effect of environmentally-related values and norms. Since behavioral economics reveals the importance of economic preferences for many individual activities, we additionally consider time and risk preferences, altruism, trust, and reciprocity in our econometric analysis. With respect to the latter factors, only patience has a significantly negative effect on electricity consumption. Instead, our estimation results suggest a high relevance of several individual housing and dwelling characteristics and socio-demographics. The most interesting result is probably that neither environmentally-related values such as ecological policy identification and environmental awareness nor environmentally-related personal and social norms have a significant effect. In contrast to the USA and to the demand for green electricity in Germany, these estimation results suggest that citizens with strong environmentally-related values and norms in Germany do not consider low electricity consumption as an important direction for environmental and climate protection.

本文基于德国 3700 多名公民的数据，实证检验了几组解释因素对电力消耗的相关性。除了控制个人住房和居住特征以及社会人口统计外，我们还分析了与环境相关的价值观和规范的影响。由于行为经济学揭示了经济偏好对许多个体活动的重要性，因此我们在计量经济学分析中还考虑了时间和风险偏好、利他主义、信任和互惠。对于后面的因素，只有耐心对电力消耗有显着的负面影响。相反，我们的估计结果表明若干个人住房和住宅特征与社会人口统计学具有高度相关性。最有趣的结果可能是，与环境相关的价值观（如生态政策识别和环境意识）以及与环境相关的个人和社会规范都没有显着影响。与美国和德国对绿色电力的需求相反，这些估算结果表明，德国具有强烈环境相关价值观和规范的公民并不将低耗电量视为环境和气候保护的重要方向。