Attitudes and behaviours of private sector landlords towards the energy efficiency of tenanted homes

Abstract

The UK's housing stock generates approximately 27 per cent of the country's total annual carbon emissions. In light of the legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, new housing is subject to a tightening of regulations governing energy demand and efficiency resulting in a gradual improvement in carbon emissions. The question is how to achieve the deep carbon emission reductions from existing domestic properties, of which 75 per cent will still be in use in 2050. Government has sought to provide incentives to homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their households, and mandate improvements in socially rented housing using a range of fiscal measures, most recently the 'Green Deal'. There has however been little consideration of the 18 per cent of UK households who privately rent their home, a tenure that is growing fast. The aim of this research is to investigate the factors that influence private sector landlords when considering energy efficiency improvements to their tenanted homes. The results indicate that Government policy has consistently failed to engage private sector landlords in the issue of energy efficiency and thus measures must be taken to understand the motivations of landlords in order to design effective incentives and interventions.

Improving energy efficiency in private rented housing: Why don't landlords act?

“…1 Indeed, the majority of research into the attitudes and perceptions of PRS landlords has been quantitative and has neglected to explore the psychological and social factors behind landlords' decisions and behaviour. 24 Overall, it is evident that little progress has been made over at least the last two decades, since the 1991 English House Condition Survey first highlighted the problem of poor energy performance in the PRS, to develop policies and initiatives that convince landlords of the benefits of making energy efficiency improvements. 25 This paper seeks to help address this deficit in our understanding of what deters and motivates landlords to act through the provision of empirical evidence revealing insights into their decision-making processes regarding investment in energy efficiency.…”

“…However, they go on to caution that educating landlords is unlikely to automatically foster pro-environmental behaviour as the drivers of this are rather more complex than that. 24 The principal-agent/split incentive problem and issues of knowledge deficit resonate across different contexts, having been widely identified in the UK, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. There is, however, less coverage within the literature regarding solutions and policy responses.…”

Achieving affordable housing through energy efficiency strategy

“…Hence, the split of benefits among different stakeholders represents a barrier to innovation (Sorrell et al, 2000), as also highlighted in related fields (Schächtele and Uhlenbrock, 2011;Howard and Holmes, 2012). Instead, in the case study examined here a likely key strength seems to be the involvement, since the beginning, of social housing organizations with twofold role of developers and managing entities (Swan et al, 2013;Hope and Booth, 2014).…”

Leveraging energy efficiency to finance public-private social housing projects

“…Given the framework outlined so far, building energy performance turns out to depend on the tenure type, since lessors and renters appear to be less engaged in sustainability concerns than owner-occupiers (Hope and Booth, 2014). Nonetheless, some analyses concerning affordable housing point out that social landlords exhibit also different behaviors.…”

“…The problem is twofold. On the one hand, landlords are not willing to invest money in improving the efficiency of their rented dwellings as they are not asked to pay energy bills (Hope and Booth, 2014). In a nutshell, it could be said that landlords could more easily change the tenants rather than building installations and finishes.…”