Exploring residential energy consumers’ willingness to accept and pay to offset their CO2 emission
International Journal of Energy Sector Management
ISSN: 1750-6220
Article publication date: 2 November 2015
Abstract
Purpose
Voluntary carbon offsets have the potential to contribute to reduce carbon emission and thereby meet the national and international target of carbon emission. However, the public support for such scheme in the energy sector is unclear. The purpose of this paper was to invest whether and why residential energy consumers are willing to pay to offset the CO2 emission from electricity consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected using a self-administrated online questionnaire. A sample of size 1,022 respondents with useable questionnaires was received. Contingent valuation method is used to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) for carbon offset. Finally, the ordered logit model is used in modeling willing to pay for carbon offset.
Findings
The results show that there is significant support from residential energy consumers to offset their CO2 emission from electricity consumption. The WTP is motivated by consumers’ perceptions toward carbon offset, moral obligation and individual’s social-demographic backgrounds.
Originality/value
This paper contributes a new insight on whether and why residential energy consumers would be willing to pay to offset carbon emission from electricity consumption.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The financial support by the “Energi på havet (Energy at sea)” project, Offshore Center Denmark, the Growth Forum for Southern Denmark and the European Regional Development Fund is gratefully acknowledged. The authors wish also to thank for the comments from anonymous reviewers for improving the paper.
Citation
Yang, Y. and Solgaard, H.S. (2015), "Exploring residential energy consumers’ willingness to accept and pay to offset their CO2 emission", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 643-662. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJESM-09-2013-0003
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited