IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v30y2008i3p1246-1262.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A choice modelling analysis on the similarity between distribution utilities' and industrial customers' price and quality preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Söderberg, Magnus

Abstract

The Swedish Electricity Act states that electricity distribution must comply with both price and quality requirements. In order to maintain efficient regulation it is necessary to firstly, define quality attributes and secondly, determine a customer's priorities concerning price and quality attributes. If distribution utilities gain an understanding of customer preferences and incentives for reporting them, the regulator can save a lot of time by surveying them rather than their customers. This study applies a choice modelling methodology where utilities and industrial customers are asked to evaluate the same twelve choice situations in which price and four specific quality attributes are varied. The preferences expressed by the utilities, and estimated by a random parameter logit, correspond quite well with the preferences expressed by the largest industrial customers. The preferences expressed by the utilities are reasonably homogenous in relation to forms of association (private limited, public and trading partnership). If the regulator acts according to the preferences expressed by the utilities, smaller industrial customers will have to pay for quality they have not asked for.

Suggested Citation

  • Söderberg, Magnus, 2008. "A choice modelling analysis on the similarity between distribution utilities' and industrial customers' price and quality preferences," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1246-1262, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:30:y:2008:i:3:p:1246-1262
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140-9883(07)00018-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brownstone, David & Train, Kenneth, 1998. "Forecasting new product penetration with flexible substitution patterns," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1-2), pages 109-129, November.
    2. Hanley, Nick & Mourato, Susana & Wright, Robert E, 2001. "Choice Modelling Approaches: A Superior Alternative for Environmental Valuation?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 435-462, July.
    3. Greene, William H. & Hensher, David A. & Rose, John, 2006. "Accounting for heterogeneity in the variance of unobserved effects in mixed logit models," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 75-92, January.
    4. Brownstone, David & Bunch, David S. & Train, Kenneth, 2000. "Joint mixed logit models of stated and revealed preferences for alternative-fuel vehicles," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 315-338, June.
    5. Lawrence J. White, 1972. "Quality Variation When Prices Are Regulated," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 425-436, Autumn.
    6. Beenstock, Michael & Goldin, Ephraim & Haitovsky, Yoel, 1998. "Response bias in a conjoint analysis of power outages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 135-156, April.
    7. Klein, Christopher C. & H. Sweeney, George, 1999. "Regulator preferences and utility prices: evidence from natural gas distribution utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-15, February.
    8. Anderson, Roland & Taylor, Lewis, 1986. "The social cost of unsupplied electricity : A critical review," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 139-146, July.
    9. Scarpa, Riccardo & Ruto, Eric S. K. & Kristjanson, Patti & Radeny, Maren & Drucker, Adam G. & Rege, John E. O., 2003. "Valuing indigenous cattle breeds in Kenya: an empirical comparison of stated and revealed preference value estimates," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 409-426, July.
    10. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521766555, January.
    11. Alvarez-Farizo, Begona & Hanley, Nick, 2002. "Using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms. An example from Spain," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 107-116, January.
    12. M. Munasinghe & A. Sanghvi, 1988. "Reliability of Electricity Supply, Outage Costs and Value of Service: An Overview," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Special I), pages 1-18.
    13. Peltzman, Sam, 1976. "Toward a More General Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 211-240, August.
    14. Nick Hanley & Robert Wright & Vic Adamowicz, 1998. "Using Choice Experiments to Value the Environment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(3), pages 413-428, April.
    15. James, Sallie & Burton, Michael P., 2003. "Consumer preferences for GM food and other attributes of the food system," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 47(4), pages 1-18.
    16. Nick Hanley & Susana Mourato & Robert E. Wright, 2001. "Choice Modelling Approaches: A Superior Alternative for Environmental Valuatioin?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 435-462, July.
    17. Hall, Jane & Viney, Rosalie & Haas, Marion & Louviere, Jordan, 2004. "Using stated preference discrete choice modeling to evaluate health care programs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(9), pages 1026-1032, September.
    18. Sheshinski, Eytan, 1976. "Price, Quality and Quantity Regulation in Monopoly Situations," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 43(17), pages 127-137, May.
    19. David Sappington, 2005. "Regulating Service Quality: A Survey," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 123-154, November.
    20. Lars Hultkrantz & Reza Mortazavi, 2001. "Anomalies in the Value of Travel-Time Changes," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 35(2), pages 285-299, May.
    21. Powe, N. A. & Bateman, I. J., 2003. "Ordering effects in nested 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' contingent valuation designs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 255-270, June.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Chinese, Damiana & Nardin, Gioacchino & Saro, Onorio, 2011. "Multi-criteria analysis for the selection of space heating systems in an industrial building," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 556-565.
    2. Ovaere, Marten, 2023. "Cost-efficiency and quality regulation of energy network utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    3. Tianlei Zang & Yueping Xiang & Jianwei Yang, 2017. "The Tripartite Game Model for Electricity Pricing in Consideration of the Power Quality," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-27, December.
    4. Taro Ohdoko & Satoru Komatsu & Shinji Kaneko, 2013. "Residential preferences for stable electricity supply and a reduction in air pollution risk: a benefit transfer study using choice modeling in China," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 15(3), pages 309-328, July.
    5. Niclas Berggren, 2012. "The Calculus of Consent: some Swedish connections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 313-321, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Longo, Alberto & Markandya, Anil & Petrucci, Marta, 2008. "The internalization of externalities in the production of electricity: Willingness to pay for the attributes of a policy for renewable energy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 140-152, August.
    2. Yu-Hui Chen & Kai-Han Qiu & Kang Ernest Liu & Chun-Yuan Chiang, 2020. "Are Consumers Willing to Pay a Premium for Pure Rice Noodles? A Study of Discrete Choice Experiments in Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-18, July.
    3. Schmitz, Kim & Schmitz, P. Michael & Wronka, Tobias C., 2003. "Bewertung von Landschaftsfunktionen mit Choice Experiments," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 52(08), pages 1-11.
    4. Haghani, Milad & Bliemer, Michiel C.J. & Hensher, David A., 2021. "The landscape of econometric discrete choice modelling research," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    5. Campbell, Danny, 2007. "Combining mixed logit models and random effects models to identify the determinants of willingness to pay for rural landscape improvements," 81st Annual Conference, April 2-4, 2007, Reading University, UK 7975, Agricultural Economics Society.
    6. Abdullah, Sabah & Mariel, Petr, 2010. "Choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4570-4581, August.
    7. Paleti, Rajesh, 2018. "Generalized multinomial probit Model: Accommodating constrained random parameters," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 248-262.
    8. de Ayala, Amaia & Hoyos, David & Mariel, Petr, 2015. "Suitability of discrete choice experiments for landscape management under the European Landscape Convention," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 79-96.
    9. Richard T. Carson & Miko_aj Czajkowski, 2014. "The discrete choice experiment approach to environmental contingent valuation," Chapters, in: Stephane Hess & Andrew Daly (ed.), Handbook of Choice Modelling, chapter 9, pages 202-235, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Domínguez-Torreiro, Marcos & Soliño, Mario, 2011. "Provided and perceived status quo in choice experiments: Implications for valuing the outputs of multifunctional rural areas," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2523-2531.
    11. Deka, Devajyoti & Carnegie, Jon, 2021. "Predicting transit mode choice of New Jersey workers commuting to New York City from a stated preference survey," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    12. van der Kroon, Bianca & Brouwer, Roy & van Beukering, Pieter J.H., 2014. "The impact of the household decision environment on fuel choice behavior," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 236-247.
    13. Araña, Jorge E. & León, Carmelo J., 2013. "Dynamic hypothetical bias in discrete choice experiments: Evidence from measuring the impact of corporate social responsibility on consumers demand," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 53-61.
    14. Magnus Söderberg, 2014. "Willingness to Pay for Nontraditional Attributes Among Participants of a Long-Distance Running Race," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(3), pages 285-302, June.
    15. Richard T. Carson, 2011. "Contingent Valuation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2489.
    16. Achtnicht, Martin & Madlener, Reinhard, 2014. "Factors influencing German house owners' preferences on energy retrofits," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 254-263.
    17. Collins, Jill P. & Vossler, Christian A., 2009. "Incentive compatibility tests of choice experiment value elicitation questions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 226-235, September.
    18. Haghani, Milad & Sarvi, Majid & Shahhoseini, Zahra, 2015. "Accommodating taste heterogeneity and desired substitution pattern in exit choices of pedestrian crowd evacuees using a mixed nested logit model," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 58-68.
    19. De Ayala Bilbao, Amaya & Hoyos Ramos, David & Mariel Chladkova, Petr, 2012. "Landscape valuation through discrete choice experiments: Current practice and future research reflections," BILTOKI 1134-8984, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Economía Aplicada III (Econometría y Estadística).
    20. Eggert, Håkan & Olsson, Björn, 2004. "Heterogeneous preferences for marine amenities: A choice experiment applied to water quality," Working Papers in Economics 126, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:30:y:2008:i:3:p:1246-1262. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.