Dutch energy consumer preferences for the adoption of sustainable residential heating technologies

Abstract

Climate change and global warming are some of the greatest challenges the world is currently facing. This challenge has structural impacts on the natural environment as well as on human well-being. As a response to the concerns regarding climate change, the Netherlands started a renewable energy transition. Nevertheless, the realisation of the Dutch energy transition is far from being achieved. Changes in energy behaviour such as the adoption of energy-efficient technologies will help to achieve the Dutch energy transition goals. Businesses and policymakers in the energy sector can accelerate this process. To do so it is vital for them to know the preferences of the energy consumers. Stated choice experiments are a useful method to measure choice behaviour and consumer preferences. The method uses experiments with hypothetical choice situations in which the respondents are asked to choose between multiple options. However, it is the question of whether this method is useful for measuring energy consumer preferences. Prior academic research showed that energy consumer behaviour strongly depends on situational and contextual factors. Context-dependent stated choice experiments can serve as a solution because they include a stated choice context related to the choice situations. In this research, the contexts will