Consumer choice in an energy efficient lighting context

Abstract

Wide use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) offers opportunity for residential savings withfavourable environmental benefits. The size of the South African residential market shows that thereare strong opportunities to be optimised. To exploit such opportunities, it is important to look at strate-gies that influence independent and interdependentconsumer choice in lighting, and to examine how far these strategies have been successful in promoting the market penetration of CFLs. While this is so,there are some areas of concern about the performance of the product that have to be addressed, as well as need for public action arising from external diseconomies of consumption.