IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v181y2021ics0921800920309976.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hope for the future and willingness to pay for sustainable energy

Author

Listed:
  • Pleeging, Emma
  • van Exel, Job
  • Burger, Martijn J.
  • Stavropoulos, Spyridon

Abstract

In this study, we examine whether Willingness To Pay (WTP) for green energy is related to hope and several attitudes towards climate change, namely, denial, worry and level of understanding. Using cross-sectional data comprising answers from 905 respondents from the Netherlands, we find that people who are more generally hopeful are willing to pay more for green energy, but only if this hope is not based on denial of the severity of the issue. In addition, we find that WTP is associated with understanding and worry, and that these attitudes are even more closely related to WTP if they are accompanied by hope. Hope based on denial however strengthens the negative relation of a lack of worry and understanding with WTP. These findings highlight the importance of fostering realistic hopes regarding climate change to encourage sustainable behaviour, and could help to frame sustainability policies and measures in a way that maximizes people's willingness to support and contribute to investments in climate change mitigation.

Suggested Citation

  • Pleeging, Emma & van Exel, Job & Burger, Martijn J. & Stavropoulos, Spyridon, 2021. "Hope for the future and willingness to pay for sustainable energy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:181:y:2021:i:c:s0921800920309976
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106900
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800920309976
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106900?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Arkesteijn, Karlijn & Oerlemans, Leon, 2005. "The early adoption of green power by Dutch households: An empirical exploration of factors influencing the early adoption of green electricity for domestic purposes," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 183-196, January.
    2. Ian H. Rowlands & Daniel Scott & Paul Parker, 2003. "Consumers and green electricity: profiling potential purchasers," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 36-48, January.
    3. Torres, Cati & Faccioli, Michela & Riera Font, Antoni, 2017. "Waiting or acting now? The effect on willingness-to-pay of delivering inherent uncertainty information in choice experiments," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 231-240.
    4. van Exel, N.J.A. & Brouwer, W.B.F. & van den Berg, B. & Koopmanschap, M.A., 2006. "With a little help from an anchor: Discussion and evidence of anchoring effects in contingent valuation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 836-853, October.
    5. Brian Byrnes & Clive Jones† & Sandra Goodman‡, 1999. "Contingent Valuation and Real Economic Commitments: Evidence from Electric Utility Green Pricing Programmes," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 149-166.
    6. Hansla, Andre & Gamble, Amelie & Juliusson, Asgeir & Garling, Tommy, 2008. "Psychological determinants of attitude towards and willingness to pay for green electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 768-774, February.
    7. Hansen, Kenneth & Breyer, Christian & Lund, Henrik, 2019. "Status and perspectives on 100% renewable energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 471-480.
    8. Akcura, Elcin, 2015. "Mandatory versus voluntary payment for green electricity," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 84-94.
    9. Oerlemans, Leon A.G. & Chan, Kai-Ying & Volschenk, Jako, 2016. "Willingness to pay for green electricity: A review of the contingent valuation literature and its sources of error," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 875-885.
    10. Julius Grund & Antje Brock, 2019. "Why We Should Empty Pandora’s Box to Create a Sustainable Future: Hope, Sustainability and Its Implications for Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, February.
    11. Ana Bobinac & N. Job A. van Exel & Frans F. H. Rutten & Werner B. F. Brouwer, 2013. "Valuing Qaly Gains By Applying A Societal Perspective," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(10), pages 1272-1281, October.
    12. Torsten J. Gerpott & Ilaha Mahmudova, 2010. "Determinants of price mark‐up tolerance for green electricity – lessons for environmental marketing strategies from a study of residential electricity customers in Germany," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(5), pages 304-318, July.
    13. MacMillan, Douglas & Hanley, Nick & Lienhoop, Nele, 2006. "Contingent valuation: Environmental polling or preference engine?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 299-307, November.
    14. Sebastian Himmler & Job Exel & Meg Perry-Duxbury & Werner Brouwer, 2020. "Willingness to pay for an early warning system for infectious diseases," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(5), pages 763-773, July.
    15. 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.
    16. Langford, Ian H. & Bateman, Ian J., 1996. "Elicitation and truncation effects in contingent valuation studies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 265-267, December.
    17. Paul C. Stern, 2012. "Fear and hope in climate messages," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(8), pages 572-573, August.
    18. Amador, Francisco Javier & González, Rosa Marina & Ramos-Real, Francisco Javier, 2013. "Supplier choice and WTP for electricity attributes in an emerging market: The role of perceived past experience, environmental concern and energy saving behavior," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 953-966.
    19. Ma, Chunbo & Rogers, Abbie A. & Kragt, Marit E. & Zhang, Fan & Polyakov, Maksym & Gibson, Fiona & Chalak, Morteza & Pandit, Ram & Tapsuwan, Sorada, 2015. "Consumers’ willingness to pay for renewable energy: A meta-regression analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 93-109.
    20. Soon, Jan-Jan & Ahmad, Siti-Aznor, 2015. "Willingly or grudgingly? A meta-analysis on the willingness-to-pay for renewable energy use," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 877-887.
    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. Faulques, Martin & Bonnet, Jean & Bourdin, Sébastien & Juge, Marine & Pigeon, Jonas & Richard, Charlotte, 2022. "Generational effect and territorial distributive justice, the two main drivers for willingness to pay for renewable energies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    2. Pavlović, Boban & Ivezić, Dejan & Živković, Marija, 2022. "Transition pathways of household heating in Serbia: Analysis based on an agent-based model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    3. Calikoglu, Umit & Aydinalp Koksal, Merih, 2022. "Green electricity and Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin demand analysis for Türkiye," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    4. Zapata, Samuel D. & Carpio, Carlos E., . "Distribution-Free Methods to Estimate Willingness to Pay Models Using Discrete Response Valuation Data," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 49(1).
    5. Liobikienė, Genovaitė & Dagiliūtė, Renata, 2021. "Do positive aspects of renewable energy contribute to the willingness to pay more for green energy?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    6. Nadia Yusuf & Mostafa F. Fawzy, 2023. "From Gym to Grid: Evaluating the Impact of COVID-19 on Saudi Gym-Goers’ Willingness to Utilize Human Kinetic Energy for Sustainable Energy Generation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-19, June.
    7. Lorteau, Steve & Muzzerall, Parker & Deneault, Audrey-Ann & Kennedy, Emily Huddart & Rocque, Rhéa & Racine, Nicole & Bureau, Jean-François, 2024. "Do climate concerns and worries predict energy preferences? A meta-analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    8. Artur Pawłowski & Paweł Rydzewski, 2023. "Challenges and Opportunities for the Energy Sector in the Face of Threats Such as Climate Change and the COVID-19 Pandemic—An International Perspective," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-21, May.
    9. Armin Razmjoo & Mostafa Rezaei & Seyedali Mirjalili & Meysam Majidi Nezhad & Giuseppe Piras, 2021. "Development of Sustainable Energy Use with Attention to Fruitful Policy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-17, December.

    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. Oerlemans, Leon A.G. & Chan, Kai-Ying & Volschenk, Jako, 2016. "Willingness to pay for green electricity: A review of the contingent valuation literature and its sources of error," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 875-885.
    2. Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2019. "Do Consumers Want to Pay for Green Electricity? A Case Study from Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-20, March.
    3. Dalia Streimikiene & Tomas Balezentis & Ilona Alisauskaite-Seskiene & Gintare Stankuniene & Zaneta Simanaviciene, 2019. "A Review of Willingness to Pay Studies for Climate Change Mitigation in the Energy Sector," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-38, April.
    4. Herbes, Carsten & Friege, Christian & Baldo, Davide & Mueller, Kai-Markus, 2015. "Willingness to pay lip service? Applying a neuroscience-based method to WTP for green electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 562-572.
    5. Damigos, D. & Tourkolias, C. & Diakoulaki, D., 2009. "Households' willingness to pay for safeguarding security of natural gas supply in electricity generation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 2008-2017, May.
    6. Torsten J. Gerpott & Ilaha Mahmudova, 2010. "Determinants of price mark‐up tolerance for green electricity – lessons for environmental marketing strategies from a study of residential electricity customers in Germany," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(5), pages 304-318, July.
    7. Tabi, Andrea & Hille, Stefanie Lena & Wüstenhagen, Rolf, 2014. "What makes people seal the green power deal? — Customer segmentation based on choice experiment in Germany," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 206-215.
    8. Lehmann, Nico & Sloot, Daniel & Schüle, Christopher & Ardone, Armin & Fichtner, Wolf, 2023. "The motivational drivers behind consumer preferences for regional electricity – Results of a choice experiment in Southern Germany," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    9. Balezentis, Tomas & Streimikiene, Dalia & Mikalauskas, Ignas & Shen, Zhiyang, 2021. "Towards carbon free economy and electricity: The puzzle of energy costs, sustainability and security based on willingness to pay," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    10. Chan, Kai-Ying & Oerlemans, Leon A.G. & Volschenk, Jako, 2015. "On the construct validity of measures of willingness to pay for green electricity: Evidence from a South African case," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 321-328.
    11. Zerrahn, Alexander, 2017. "Wind Power and Externalities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 245-260.
    12. Dagher, Leila & Bird, Lori & Heeter, Jenny, 2017. "Residential green power demand in the United States," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PB), pages 1062-1068.
    13. Edyta Ropuszyńska-Surma & Magdalena Węglarz & Janusz Szwabiński, 2018. "Energy prosumers. Profiling the energy microgeneration market in Lower Silesia, Poland," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 28(1), pages 75-94.
    14. Liao, Shu-Yi & Tseng, Wei-Chun & Chen, Chi-Chung, 2010. "Eliciting public preference for nuclear energy against the backdrop of global warming," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 7054-7069, November.
    15. Cardella, Eric & Ewing, Brad & Williams, Ryan Blake, 2018. "Green is Good – The Impact of Information Nudges on the Adoption of Voluntary Green Power Plans," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266583, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    16. Lehmann, Nico & Sloot, Daniel & Ardone, Armin & Fichtner, Wolf, 2022. "Willingness to pay for regional electricity generation – A question of green values and regional product beliefs?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    17. Alsulami, Abdulkarim & Fairbrass, Jenny & Botelho, Tiago & Assadinia, Shahin, 2024. "Renewable energy and innovation in Saudi Arabia: An exploration of factors affecting consumers' intention to adopt Solar PV," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    18. Will, Christian & Lehmann, Nico & Baumgartner, Nora & Feurer, Sven & Jochem, Patrick & Fichtner, Wolf, 2022. "Consumer understanding and evaluation of carbon-neutral electric vehicle charging services," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    19. Martínez-Cruz, Adán L. & Núñez, Héctor M., 2021. "Tension in Mexico's energy transition: Are urban residential consumers in Aguascalientes willing to pay for renewable energy and green jobs?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    20. Wang, Yushi & Wu, Libo & Zhou, Yang, 2024. "Household's willingness to pay for renewable electricity: A meta-analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).

    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:ecolec:v:181:y:2021:i:c:s0921800920309976. 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/ecolecon .

    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.