Renovation and Energy-related Household Behaviors in French Dwellings

The thermal comfort in winter is ensured by the capacity of space heating to maintain the desired indoor temperature. This temperature is chosen by household, subject to two limits. On the one hand, the indoor temperature must be high enough to prevent adverse effects on human health due to increase in the risk of diseases. On the other hand, it would be preferable to limit the level of indoor temperature in order to reduce energy consumption for environmental and economic reasons. Given the importance of thermal comfort, it may play a major role in the decision to undertake or not the retrofits works. The discomfort encourages the household to improve thermal characteristics of dwelling and to install more efficient equipment. In this study we propose first the formulation of household utility function from energy retrofits which takes into account the thermal comfort. After that, we estimate Multinomial and Mixed Logits to understand the household behavior the role of thermal comfort in the household's energy decisions. In January 2015 a sample of 2000 respondents is collected by internet from a panel of 600,000 French Households. The survey consists of two parts (revealed preferences data and two choice experiments) and contains questions about socio-economic and demographic information, dwelling conditions, energy attitudes, space heating system and thermal comfort. In the first choice experiment, the respondent must take a choice between three offers of space heating systems in order to replace the old system which is broken down. The offers are characterized by the following attributes: investment cost, expected energy-savings potential, energy used, type of space heating system, guarantee period, control system to manage set temperature, financial grant and bank loan. In the second choice experiment, we propose to improve energy efficiency of respondent's dwelling. The respondent must choose between three offers: install new space heating system, insulate walls and roof, to do both. The offers' attributes are the same as in the first choice experiment.