Tormo Scherer
Project Title: “It is just too much hassle!” -- A stated choice experiment regarding the effects of hassle factors on the decision-making of adopting sustainable heating technologies by homeowners in the Netherlands.
The Dutch government has set the goal to achieve a 95% CO2 emission reduction by 2050 compared to 1990. To accomplish this has the Dutch government decided to stop using natural gas for residential heating by 2050. As almost 90% of these buildings are connected to a natural gas grid, this is a huge task. To tackle this, every municipality had to make a specific plan for each neighbourhood to be independent of natural gas. However, barriers make it challenging for municipalities to execute their established visions. The most mentioned barriers for adopting a sustainable heating technology are technical, financial, institutional and informational barriers. However, much less mentioned barriers are psychological barriers that hinder the adoption of sustainable heating technologies, as it questions the effort of decision-making itself. In this decision process, the cognitive burden of hassle plays a role. Hassles are micro-stressors in the form of the cost of time, effort, complexities in doing renovations, mess and nuisance, and uncertainties that can (collectively) feel like an additional barrier, leading to inaction, delay and uncertain decisions.
By using a stated choice experiment I will try to analyse what homeowners observe as a hassle and to what extent does this hassle have an impact on their decision. By making homeowners compare different gradations of hassle to other different hassle factors and financial factors can this impact be measured. I aim to find a clear overview of which hassle factors exist, insights into how those factors are perceived by homeowners and how severe these factors are felt. This gives insights into the extent hassle factors influence the decision-making and if there are possibly clusters of people that observe hassle factors different than other clusters. This can be used by policymakers to target specific clusters of residents to increase the adoption of sustainable heating technologies by decreasing or increasing hassle for certain technologies. Additionally, businesses can use the information on the willingness-to-pay of specific clusters, by offering hassle-free solutions to help homeowners adopt sustainable heating technologies. By doing so the heat transition can be accelerated.
Graduation committee: Gerdien de Vries, Caspar Chorus and Mathijs de Haas
