Why Low-Carbon Publicity Effect Limits? The Role of Heterogeneous Intention in Reducing Household Energy Consumption

Jin Zhang,Jinkai Li,Lianrui Ma

doi:10.3390/en14227634

Abstract

Low-carbon knowledge is seen as having a key role in interfering with household energy consumption behaviors by wide consensus from political and academic areas. Whether low-carbon publicity will help to reduce household energy consumption is still in dispute. By constructing an integrated knowledge-intention-behavior model and using 1335 detailed survey questionnaires of household energy behavior in Henan Province, the central area in China, this paper finds that in the developing area low-carbon knowledge or publicity cannot positively impact household energy-saving behavior even if mediated by energy awareness and energy-saving attitudes. Low-carbon knowledge does improve energy-saving attitude and attitude does not decrease household energy consumption directly. Familiarity with particular energy-saving knowledge would decrease the household energy consumption but not significantly in the statistics. Path analysis unfolds the reason that the heterogeneous effects of purchase-based intention and habitual intention explain energy consumption behavior. Subgroup analysis supports those economic factors of income and energy prices play key roles in explaining such household energy consumption behavior in the rapid urbanization area. This paper gives new evidence on the residential energy-saving behavior intervention among developing areas.

Highlights

According to the questions on the behavioral change of different appliances under the variation of energy prices, we find that the elasticity of refrigerators, range hoods, electric cookers, and computers is relatively small, while that of life-improving products, such as electric heaters, air conditioners, and microwave ovens is relatively large, which is similar with the results of [51]
We get rid of some items that do not meet the standard, and get 6 factors composed of 22 indicators
This paper firstly concludes that low-carbon publicity in developing regions cannot fully show positive effects on household energy conservation, because the purchasebased intention will break down the causal chain of knowledge-intention-behavior

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. To promote the energy transition in households, measures of changing energy consumption behavior are always conducted by governments. Low-carbon knowledge publicity has been widely adopted around the world, which is hoped to influence the energy behavior of the residential sector.

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Conclusion