Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

How important is energy efficiency for Slovenian households? A case of homeowners and potential homebuyers and their willingness to invest in more efficient heating controls

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Energy Efficiency Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Which attributes are the most important when buying a property? How much do individuals value energy efficiency? What discount rates do individuals employ when investing in energy efficiency and which factors influence them? This paper examines the results of a stated preference consumer survey undertaken in Slovenia in late 2017 to investigate these questions, also trying to answer how much the consumers are willing to consider future energy savings associated with the purchase of advanced home heating controls. The results show that energy efficiency as a decision-making attribute is very important for Slovenians, being the second most important after the property price. Females, environmentally aware and married individuals are more likely to value energy efficiency highly when buying a property. Interest in energy-efficient heating controls’ investment confirms the notion that people tend to discount the future benefits at 40%, on average, and give more importance to future energy savings when the investment cost is higher. Females favour higher implicit discount rates and shorter payback periods and therefore expect a higher return (energy savings) on the investment while people with higher education levels value future costs more and are willing to invest more due to the increased benefits of energy efficiency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The questionnaire is added in the Appendix.

References

Download references

Funding

This paper was supported by the European Union’s Framework Programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020 under grant agreement number 723741, project CONSEED. The authors received financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P2-0356).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edin Lakić.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Consumer energy efficiency decision making across sectors

Appendix

Appendix

Survey questionnaire

figure a

Example of a discounting question asked for the option of installing new advanced heating controls (part of the survey)

figure b

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Lakić, E., Damigos, D. & Gubina, A.F. How important is energy efficiency for Slovenian households? A case of homeowners and potential homebuyers and their willingness to invest in more efficient heating controls. Energy Efficiency 14, 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-020-09916-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-020-09916-x

Keywords

Navigation