White goods for white people? Drivers of electric appliance growth in emerging economies

Abstract

Will everybody want and have a refrigerator, television and washing machine as incomes rise? Considerable uncertainty surrounds the likely increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions from rising incomes among the world's poor. We examine drivers of and predict appliance ownership using machine learning and other techniques with household survey data in India, South Africa and Brazil. Televisions and refrigerators are consistently preferred over washing machines. Income is still the predominant driver of aggregate penetration levels, but its influence differs by appliance and by region. The affordability of appliances, wealth, race and religion together, among other household characteristics, help explain the heterogeneity in appliance ownership at lower income levels. Understanding non-income drivers can be helpful to identify barriers to appliance uptake and to better forecast near term residential energy demand growth within countries.