Ruben van der Ende
Project title: Dutch energy consumer preferences for the adoption of sustainable residential heating technologies
A context-dependent stated choice experiment to measure consumer behaviour within future scenarios of the Dutch energy transition
Hello, I’m Ruben and I’m writing my thesis at the Energy Transition Lab. My research is about the formulation of dynamic contexts within stated choice experiments to measure energy behaviour and mutual preferences related to sustainable energy technologies that stay valid over time. The focus of my research is supported by a case study regarding residential heating technologies.
For the realisation of a sustainable energy transition, a wide range of changes in energy behaviour is needed. Changing consumer behaviour can make a significant difference to the environment and consumer research can help policy makers understand and influence this behaviour better. However, choice behaviour and mutual preferences regarding sustainable energy technologies are difficult to measure due to the uncertain and dynamic nature of choice contexts related to the Dutch energy transition.
The contribution of my research lies in the determination of an approach that formulates dynamic future contexts within stated choice experiments to produce valid preferences for future scenarios. Furthermore, insights regarding the influences of these contexts on preferences related to the sustainable energy technologies are gained. These insights are important since they will determine the mutual preference of the alternatives which could strengthen promotion policies regarding technology adoption.
Committee: Emile Chappin, Eric Molin, Gerdien de Vries
TU Delft - Video Ruben
Summary
As a response to the concerns regarding climate change, the Netherlands started a renewable energy transition. Nevertheless, the realisation of the Dutch energy transition is far from being achieved. Changes in energy behaviour such as the adoption of energy-efficient technologies will help to achieve the Dutch energy transition goals. Businesses and policymakers in the energy sector can accelerate this process. To do so it is vital for them to know the preferences of the energy consumers.
Context-dependent stated choice experiments are a useful method to measure choice behaviour and consumer preferences. The method uses experiments with hypothetical choice situations, that include a stated choice context related to these situations, whereby the respondents are asked to choose between multiple options. In this research, the contexts will describe and explain the possible future scenarios of the Dutch energy transition. Therefore, choice behaviour regarding sustainable energy technologies can be measured in a way that it stays valid over time and that it is applicable within future scenarios.
However, knowledge is lacking on how the dynamic and uncertain future scenarios of energy transitions can be used as choice context within context-dependent stated choice experiments. Therefore, I performed a context-dependent stated choice experiment accompanied with various future scenarios of the Dutch energy transition. In particular, the experiment measures energy consumer preferences related to the adoption of sustainable heating technologies. The focus of this thesis research is on heating because sustainable heating provision is a significant factor in achieving the Dutch climate goals.
Within this research, two methods are used. First, a literature study is performed to find which contexts influence the adoption of sustainable heating alternatives. The literature shows that social interactions between energy consumers and temporal contexts are the most influential contexts to the future of Dutch residential heating. These categories are translated into "Penetration rate" and "Urgency of the Dutch energy transition" and serve as context variables for the stated choice experiment. Second, the choice experiment is executed in the form of an online survey. It measures the preferences of Dutch energy consumers regarding the sustainable heating alternatives (hybrid heat pump, all-electrical heat pump, and district heating) and asks to compare this choice with a currently used heating technology (base alternative).
After analysing the data, the research results showed that energy consumers prefer sustainable alternatives over the current situation. The all-electrical heat pump is seen as the preferred sustainable heating alternative. These preferences are mostly influenced by the technology characteristics (especially the costs), but the contexts variables are important as well. However, the socio-demographics have a bigger influence on the choice behaviour than the context variables, which indicates that personal situations are seen as more important than the overall choice context.
All in all, the results indicates that large-scale sustainable technology adoption can be achieved by improving the technical characteristics of the sustainable alternatives and by increasing the sense of urgency of the Dutch energy transition. Therefore, this research includes two policy recommendations: (1) supporting innovation to improve the technology performances and cause cost reductions, and (2) Emphasise the sense of urgency of the Dutch energy transition by starting a national promotion campaign regarding the consequences of climate change.
