Do education and income drive energy audits? A socio-spatial analysis of New York State

Understanding the Drivers of National-Level Energy Audit Behavior: Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics

“…First, the finding regarding age aligns with the few existing studies on audits [1,2]. However, those studies found relationships not only between age, but also between higher incomes (a negative association) and more education, which this study did not find.…”

“…Finally, the finding that homeowners are more likely than renters to undertake audits is well in line with a large body of existing work on misaligned incentives and principal-agent challenges faced by renters [62][63][64][65], and is also in alignment with other studies on audits [1]. Renters are also more likely to consume more electricity, all else being equal, in part because the price signal is absent in many rental arrangements.…”

“…No other studies, to the knowledge of the authors, have explored the audit variable found in the RECS dataset, and energy audits in general are understudied. Some recent studies [1,2] assessing socioeconomic and qualitative characteristics of individuals undertaking energy audits are focused on specific geographic areas, such as Seattle or New York, but do not take a national-scale view of audit behavior. Both [1,2] found that age was positively correlated with audit behavior in Seattle, WA, and New York State, respectively.…”

“…Many of these strategies are inexpensive and can result in significant cost savings for consumers. One way for residents to learn about and choose from a number of these options-thereby lessening information asymmetries-is to undertake a home energy audit [1,2]. Some researchers argue that reducing the information barrier is a necessary step to closing the intention-behavior gap in energy efficiency practices [3,4].…”

“…Some researchers point to the intention-behavior gap as a driving force behind lack of energy efficiency program participation, whereby stark differences exist between what individuals intend to do and actually do [10][11][12][13][14]; others argue that the technical and cost-saving potential for efficient buildings exists but that intervening economic factors such as information asymmetries, heterogeneous risk tolerance thresholds among individuals, and inaccurate personal discount rates lead to lack of participation in such cost-savings potential [3,4,6,[15][16][17]. Thus, many researchers are turning to socioeconomic and demographic factors as drivers of energy efficiency decisions to complement the field's knowledge of physical building characteristics that influence energy consumption [1,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]; the present study builds upon this large and growing body of research.…”