Abstract
If the pattern of appliance use varies between households, then we expect that appliance replacement cycle also varies between households. Although many studies identified early adopters of new energy-efficient products, few studies have examined households that have been using old energy-inefficient products and how their characteristics are associated with product replacement. In this study, we initially modify a survival function and develop an economic model to evaluate the impact of household characteristics on appliance replacement. We subsequently apply the model in microlevel data analysis from the Survey on Carbon Dioxide Emission from Households obtained from the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. We use information about age distribution of refrigerators (REFs) and examine how family size, household income, and age of household’s head affect the replacement cycle of REFs. Our empirical results reveal that (1) large-sized, (2) high-income, and (3) young households replace REFs more rapidly. These findings suggest that policies that encourage small-sized, elderly, and low-income households to replace old appliances are needed.
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Notes
Detailed reasons regarding the appliance selection are discussed in Sect. 3.1.
In SCDEH 2016, REF with the largest internal volume is defined as the main REF owned by the household.
Only 10,043 out of 11,632 households answered the age of households’ head. We focus on these 10,043 households henceforth in the remaining analyses.
We further estimated these models for households with only one REF. The estimation results are similar to the results presented in Table 3. This fact implies that the ownership of REFs does not affect the impact of family size/household income/age of household’s head on the replacement cycle of the main REF.
Estimated parameters in Model 3–2 and Model 3–4 are used for the calculation, respectively.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-1707) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency and KAKENHI (18K01578) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This research was also supported by Aoyama Gakuin University Research Institute “Early Eagle” grant program for promotion of research by early career researchers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of Society of Environmental Economics and Policy Studies; we received valuable comments from Professor Isamu Matsukawa. We would also like to thank Fumihiro Goto for his accurate and helpful advices.
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Wang, J., Matsumoto, S. An economic model of home appliance replacement: application to refrigerator replacement among Japanese households. Environ Econ Policy Stud 24, 29–48 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-020-00295-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-020-00295-2