Abstract
BackgroundMost countries in the world especially those in Asia and Africa have been undertaking policies meant to help promote science, technology and innovation towards meeting some provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is still a sizable number of households who have not yet fully embraced energy-saving technologies. This study provides highlights on the economic and environmental benefits for investing in energy-saving light bulbs.MethodsUsing a survey and a multistage random sampling approach, we administered questionnaires to 1650 households in Ghana. The relevant diagnostic tests associated with cross-sectional data were undertaken. We estimated a maximum-likelihood probit model with its associated marginal effects to find out how the choice of energy-saving light bulb (behaviour) is influenced by environmental consciousness (both local knowledge and global knowledge) and other demographic factors.ResultsOur results are consistent with economic theory as well as what earlier empirical evidence found in literature. That is, environmental consciousness, education, income, etc. are very important in explaining the choice of buying energy-saving light bulbs in Ghana.ConclusionsBesides advocating for information that will make society more environmentally conscious, we further recommend the use of fiscal policies (i.e. subsidies) to support lower income brackets who are predominant in developing countries.
Highlights
Most countries in the world especially those in Asia and Africa have been undertaking policies meant to help promote science, technology and innovation towards meeting some provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals
We explained environmental consciousness which is our variable of interest with knowledge of the environment
Basing our analysis on the marginal effects in order to explore possible marginal effects, we observe that the parameter estimate for knowledge of climate change is 0.06, suggesting that if knowledge of climate change rises from zero to one, the probability of choosing an energy-efficient bulb for lighting will rise by 6%
Summary
Most countries in the world especially those in Asia and Africa have been undertaking policies meant to help promote science, technology and innovation towards meeting some provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework, science, technology and innovation (STI) have been recommended to promote efficient use of resources such as energy. It goes without saying that not all households have adopted this efficient technology not using energy-saving light bulbs. Coupled with the economic growth potential of Ghana which was about 14.0% in 2011, one would expect residential lighting consumption to rise in the coming years. We find this as a huge setback which calls for a research that borders on the extent to which environmental consciousness (awareness) can influence consumers’ behaviour towards efficient energy use
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