Research On Urban Residents’Energy-saving Behaviour And The Impact Of The Incentive Policy On Energy Efficiency Consumption

The global environmental problems not only include the deepening contradiction between energy supply and demand, and the huge threat of the sustainable puzzle of energy and resources on human development, but also the global climate and environmental problems caused by the fuel consuming. China is currently in the medium-term of urbanization and industrialization, which keeps its energy demand being high. With the transition from "productive society" to "living society", the residential energy consumption plays a more and more important role in the total energy consumption. It keeps increasing at a high speed during these years, and becomes the main growth point of energy consumption. Based on the current situation, the residential energy consumption still has great growth potential. Therefore, studying important issues concerning the residential energy consumption is of great significance. Such research is benefit to slow down residential energy consumption and optimize the structure of energy on the one side, it could also lead the industry to more green directions through guiding the choices of consumers the other way around.Very few researches have been done systematically to explore China’s residents’ energy consumption behaviours and the influence of relevant policies. Based on the above background, we proposed three goals for this research:(1) Select, define and classify residents’ energy saving behaviour based on the background of China’s residents’life style, investigate the implementation of their behaviour and their behavioural intention.(2) Explore the effects of psychological factors and socio-demographics on different energy saving behaviours, analysis the attributes of groups with different behavioural patterns.(3) Focus on China’s incentive policies towards consumption of energy saving equipment; explore how the residents perceive the policies and how the policies work on their consumption behaviour and behavioural intention. The energy saving behaviours in this research includes direct daily energy saving behaviour, indirect daily energy saving behaviour and efficiency investment behaviour. Aiming at above research goals, we did abundant literature review and built the research framework and carried out two questionnaire surveys. The first one is "Urban residents’energy saving behaviours study" questionnaire, which explores the direct and indirect daily energy saving behaviours and efficiency investment behavioural intention of China’s residents of middle part, and the relevant psychological and socio-demographic factors; we also investigate how our country’s incentive policies towards energy efficient and renewable energy equipment consumption influence residents’purchase intention to the subsidized equipment. Specifically, as renewable energy vehicle is a special kind of energy efficient and renewable energy equipment, there are various differences between the technologies, prices, incentive policies of it and energy efficient appliances. Therefore, we did a second questionnaire survey named "Renewable energy vehicle purchase behaviour survey" in Hefei and Shanghai, which are both the pilot cities of renewable energy vehicle, and studied the respondents’cognition towards renewable energy vehicle, perceived relevant incentive policies and motivations of purchasing renewable energy vehicle and the purchase behavioural intention. We get four results and conclusions from our research:(1) The urban residents’attitudes, behavioural intention towards different energy saving behaviours and the implementation of the behaviour are different. People generally did very well in the field of direct energy saving behaviour, where most of the respondents claimed that they could do the listed direct daily energy saving behaviour at most of the time. The level of people’s indirect daily energy saving behaviour (i.e. Select daily perishable articles with lower embedded energy consumption and carbon emission) is relatively lower than the level of their direct behaviour. Our urban residents generally hold very high purchase intention towards energy efficient and renewable energy equipment, among which their intention towards purchasing energy efficient refrigirator is the highest. The intentions of purchasing appliances are almost similar, but the intention of purchasing renewable energy vehicle is obviously lower than other intentions. Most of the respondents expressed that they would buy renewable energy vehicle out of the motivation of economic benefits, while very few respondents claimed that they would do so out of the motivation of technology interests. Privilege and convenience motivation ranks the second, environmental protection motivation ranks the third and social norm motivation ranks the fourth. Respondents who would buy renewable energy vehicle in three years only accounts for10-20%.(2) Socio-demographics have different influences on various types of energy saving behaviours. Female do more indirect daily energy saving behaviour and efficiency investment than male. The levels of direct daily and indirect energy saving behaviours and efficiency investment behavioural intention are significantly higher in the married than in the single. For the household where there is a child under12years old, people’s direct and indirect energy saving behaviour and efficiency investment are significantly higher than those without children. For the household where there is person over60years old, people’s indirect energy saving behaviour is higher than those without the old. People from household where the household reference person (HRP) is female have higher level of direct energy saving behaviour than those from household where the HRP is male. People over30years old have higher level of direct daily energy saving behaviour and efficiency investment behavioural intention, while those between30to39years old are the highest. People over30years old have higher level of indirect energy saving behaviour than those under30years old, while those over40years old are the highest. People with lower family income have higher level of direct and indirect daily energy saving behaviour than those with higher family income. For the education background, people with high education level instead of low education level have higher indirect daily energy saving behaviour and efficiency investment behavioural intention.(3) The residents hold different cognition towards energy efficient and renewable energy products, and different perception towards incentive policies. Around three fourths of the consumers agree that the prices of energy efficient and renewable energy products are still high even if in the long run. Residents are generally more familiar with those subsidy policies for energy efficient appliances, where only twenty percent of the respondents said that they are unfamiliar with them. People showed lower familiarity with those incentive policies towards renewable energy appliances and vehicles, while only thirty percent of the respondents said that they are familiar with such policies. Our study also find that people valued the convenience policies most among the three types of policies for renewable energy vehicles, while more than seventy percent of the respondents think the policy is useful and want to have more of such policy.(4) Through the study of the purchase behavioural intention of energy efficient and renewable energy products, we find that the subsidy policy does not affect the purchase intention directly, but indirectly influence the intention through the effect of personal factor’s (family income) and attitudinal factor. Firstly, compared with lower income group, higher income group tend to be less blocked by financial barriers, so that their attitude and behavioural intention tend to be more consistent. Based on the moderating effect of income, we find that subsidy policy does not work on the whole sample, but significantly affect those with high family income so that they would transfer their positive attitude to action. For the purchase intention towards renewable energy vehicles, all the three types of policy affect the purchase intention through the mediating of purchase motivations, among which the information and subsidy policies also direct influence the purchase intention.This study combines multi-subjects, including economics, psychology, sociology and environmental sciences, classifies extends residential energy saving behaviour based on China’s residents’ life style relevant to energy consumption. On the foundation of behavioural and psychological models, we bring the policy factors into the research framework, and explore how the residents think of the policies and the how the policies work to affect the purchase behavioural intention. This research helps us to differentiate energy saving behaviours with various attributes and learn more about residents’ psychological and behavioural conditions. This study provides policy implications for leading different kinds of people to behave in more energy saving ways in their life. It discusses the effects and problems of current main incentive policies towards energy efficient and renewable energy products, and provides reference for the design of future policies.