Household's willingness to pay for renewable electricity: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Increasing the penetration of renewable electricity is a key solution to achieving the climate target. Demand-side payment is one crucial financial source to support the development of renewable electricity by influencing the cost-benefit tradeoff, which is usually measured by the willingness to pay. However, the willingness to pay estimation is mostly based on survey and hence incomparable due to different questions asked, assumptions made, and methods used. This paper reviewed 244 results from 134 empirical studies in 28 countries and applied a meta-regression to analyze how such features affect households' willingness to pay. We find that the willingness to pay turns scope-insensitive once the change in the penetration rate of renewables reaches the threshold (12%). Studies using contingent valuation methods yield higher estimation results compared with the other methods. Based on these results, we further calibrated previous willingness to pay results and provided a comparable worldwide dataset.