Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Norms and economic motivation in the Swedish green electricity market

Contents:

Author Info

  • Ek, Kristina
  • Söderholm, Patrik

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an econometric analysis of the most important determinants of Swedish households' choice to pay a price premium for "green" electricity. We draw on recent developments in the literature on integrating norm-motivated behavior into neoclassical consumer theory, and assume that individuals have a preference for keeping a self-image as a morally responsible person. Consumer behavior in the "green market place" will then be heavily determined by how purchases of different goods affect this self-image. The analysis is based on postal survey responses from 655 Swedish households, which are analyzed within a binary choice econometric framework. The results indicate that the impact of choosing "green" on the household budget largely influences the choice between "green" and "brown" electricity, as does the degree of perceived personal responsibility for the issue and the felt ability to affect the outcome in a positive way. We find limited support for the notion that perceptions about others' behavior in general affect individual moral norms and ultimately expressed behavior, but this is also complemented by the influence of explicit social influence. The difficulty in observing others' purchases makes it however difficult to distinguish between social and moral norms in the case of "green" electricity.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDY-4S75WPN-1/2/ada5cafceb8d15d98dd440ddd3f3bbe4
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Ecological Economics.

Volume (Year): 68 (2008)
Issue (Month): 1-2 (December)
Pages: 169-182

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2008:i:1-2:p:169-182

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

Related research

Keywords: Green electricity Consumer behavior Norms Survey;

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Ernst Fehr, 2003. "Psychological Foundations of Incentives," Microeconomics 0305010, EconWPA.
  2. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Moore, Michael R., 2007. "Private provision of environmental public goods: Household participation in green-electricity programs," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-16, January.
  3. Teisl, Mario F. & Roe, Brian & Hicks, Robert L., 2002. "Can Eco-Labels Tune a Market? Evidence from Dolphin-Safe Labeling," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 339-359, May.
  4. Nyborg, Karine & Howarth, Richard B. & Brekke, Kjell Arne, 2006. "Green consumers and public policy: On socially contingent moral motivation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 351-366, November.
  5. Rose, Steven K. & Poe, Gregory L. & Rondeau, Daniel & Schulze, William D. & Clark, Jeremy, 1997. "The Private Provision of Public Goods: Tests of a Provision Point Mechanism for Funding Green Power Programs," Working Papers 127850, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
  6. Roe, Brian & Teisl, Mario F. & Levy, Alan & Russell, Matthew, 2001. "US consumers' willingness to pay for green electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 917-925, September.
  7. Cooper, Philip & Poe, Gregory L. & Bateman, Ian J., 2004. "The structure of motivation for contingent values: a case study of lake water quality improvement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1-2), pages 69-82, September.
  8. Laura O. Taylor & Ronald G. Cummings, 1999. "Unbiased Value Estimates for Environmental Goods: A Cheap Talk Design for the Contingent Valuation Method," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 649-665, June.
  9. Wiser, Ryan H., 2007. "Using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy: A comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3-4), pages 419-432, May.
  10. Kjell Arne Brekke & Snorre Kverndokk & Karinen Nyborg, 2000. "An Economic Model of Moral Motivation," Discussion Papers 290, Research Department of Statistics Norway.
  11. Thomas Bue Bjorner & Lars Garn Hansen & Clifford S. Russell, 2002. "Environmental Labelling and Consumer's Choice - An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of the Nordic Swan," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0203, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
  12. Butler, J S & Moffitt, Robert, 1982. "A Computationally Efficient Quadrature Procedure for the One-Factor Multinomial Probit Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 761-64, May.
  13. Roland Menges & Carsten Schroeder & Stefan Traub, 2005. "Altruism, Warm Glow and the Willingness-to-Donate for Green Electricity: An Artefactual Field Experiment," Environmental & Resource Economics, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 31(4), pages 431-458, 08.
  14. Andrew A. Goett & Kathleen Hudson & Kenneth E. Train, 2000. "Customers' Choice Among Retail Energy Suppliers: The Willingness-to-Pay for Service Attributes," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 1-28.
  15. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Reiling, Stephen D., 2000. "Environmental attitudes, motivations, and contingent valuation of nonuse values: a case study involving endangered species," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 93-107, January.
  16. Champ, Patricia A. & Bishop, Richard C. & Brown, Thomas C. & McCollum, Daniel W., 1997. "Using Donation Mechanisms to Value Nonuse Benefits from Public Goods," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 151-162, June.
  17. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Ito, Nobuyuki & Takeuchi, Kenji & Tsuge, Takahiro & Kishimoto, Atsuo, 2010. "Applying threshold models to donations to a green electricity fund," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1819-1825, April.
  2. Martinsson, Johan & Lundqvist, Lennart J. & Sundström, Aksel, 2011. "Energy saving in Swedish households. The (relative) importance of environmental attitudes," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 5182-5191, September.
  3. Nobuyuki Ito & Kenji Takeuchi & Takahiro Tsuge & Atsuo Kishimoto, 2012. "The Motivation behind Behavioral Thresholds: A Latent Class Approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 1831-1847.
  4. Roland Olbrich & Martin F. Quaas & Stefan Baumgaertner, 2011. "Personal norms of sustainability and their impact on management – The case of rangeland management in semi-arid regions," Working Paper Series in Economics 209, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
  5. Kenichi Mizobuchi & Kenji Takeuchi, 2012. "The Influences of Economic and Psychological Factors on Energy-Saving Behavior: A Field Experiment in Matsuyama, Japan," Discussion Papers 1206, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
  6. Ek, Kristina & Söderholm, Patrik, 2010. "The devil is in the details: Household electricity saving behavior and the role of information," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1578-1587, March.
  7. van Kempen, Luuk & Muradian, Roldan & Sandóval, César & Castañeda, Juan-Pablo, 2009. "Too poor to be green consumers? A field experiment on revealed preferences for firewood in rural Guatemala," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2160-2167, May.
  8. Brécard, Dorothée & Hlaimi, Boubaker & Lucas, Sterenn & Perraudeau, Yves & Salladarré, Frédéric, 2009. "Determinants of demand for green products: An application to eco-label demand for fish in Europe," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 115-125, November.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2008:i:1-2:p:169-182

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.