Willingness-to-Pay for Energy Efficiency: Evidence from the European Common Market
利用欧盟家电市场产品和国家间的差异，通过享乐定价法估算能源效率的隐含价格和隐含折现率，发现考虑能耗与产品其他特征的正相关后支付意愿更高，能源效率差距小于以往研究。
Abstract This paper explores the willingness-to-pay for energy efficiency by exploiting variation across products and countries within the EU market for household appliances. Based on scanner data at product-level, I use the hedonic method to estimate implicit prices for energy efficiency and derive implicit discount rates. The paper argues that the implicit price will be underestimated when energy consumption is not only a determinant of operating cost but also is positively associated with other features of a product. The empirical analysis confirms that estimates of the willingness-to-pay are higher when this effect is accounted for in the estimation. This is especially true of product types for which the heterogeneity of usage intensity is low. The results thus indicate that the energy efficiency gap is smaller than found in earlier studies.