رابطه بین رفتار مصرف کننده و سیاست عمومی
Abstract
1- Core economic issues
2- Public policy options
3- Closing comments
Abstract
With deepening concerns over climate change, policymakers, electric utilities, environmentalists and others are increasingly championing the idea of ‘electrification,’ or the replacement of fossil fuels with electricity for direct end uses like transportation and space heating. The electric industry sees electrification as an opportunity for revitalizing sales and revenues. The focus of this paper is on consumer behavior and its nexus with public policy for advancing electrification.
Core economic issues
Oftentimes, a technology that appears to surpass competing technologies in performance and cost will still have a low market share compared with existing technologies. A key policy question is whether this slow diffusion reflects rational actors responding to dissimilar incentives or a consequence of market inefficiencies and undue barriers. The fact that those who adopt the new technology are enjoying net benefits should not infer that non-adopters are depriving themselves of similar benefits. The latter group can face dissimilar conditions (e.g., low energy use) and have unlike preferences that would make it rational for them to delay adopting the new technology. An often overlooked factor is a consumer expecting the future cost of the technology to decline over time, which means waiting to purchase the technology may be rational even though the consumer is forgoing benefits today One explanation for the S-shaped path is, therefore, potential technology adopters facing different conditions so that the economics of a new technology varies across potential users. The benefits of a new technology are both customer- and site-specific. Consumers are heterogeneous, assigning different benefits to a new technology. Some have a low risk tolerance, which translates into a higher discount rate in valuating future benefits. Empirical studies have shown that high individual discount rates, for example, can have a large effect on the adoption and diffusion of new energy-efficiency technologies.