The Appeal of the Green Deal: Empirical Evidence for the Influence of Energy Efficiency Policy on Renovating Homeowners

The Green Deal is a major new energy policy designed to support the diffusion of energy efficiency measures in UK homes. This paper provides one of the first empirical examinations of the Green Deal’s success in influencing homeowners’ renovation decisions. Using a repeated measures design in which households were questioned before and after the Green Deal’s launch in January 2013, we assess the policy’s success in raising awareness of energy efficiency. In particular, we test the effectiveness of the Green Deal’s positioning to overcome barriers to renovation among homeowners already interested in or considering energy efficiency measures. Using the innovation decision process (Rogers 2003) as a conceptual framing of the renovation decision process, we examine whether new information on energy efficiency provided by the Green Deal strengthened intentions and its antecedents. We find that (1) energy efficiency is of potential appeal to all renovators regardless of their attitudes about energy efficiency, (2) energy efficiency opportunities need to be identified in the early stages of renovation when homeowners are thinking about ways to improve their home, and (3) homeowners’ intentions towards energy efficiency are weakened by uncertainty about financial benefits, helping to explain the relatively slow uptake of the Green Deal to-date

Understanding Homeowners' Renovation Decisions::Findings of the VERD Project

The VERD Study: In October 2011, the VERD project team at the University of East Anglia began a two-year research project investigating homeowners’ renovation decisions, funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). This report and public conference summarises the findings, revealing why homeowners renovate and why they decide to improve their home energy efficiency

Debt Relief and the Millennium Development Goals

human development, millennium development goals, mdgs

Money as a social construct and public good

In a new book, Ann Pettifor explores money and monetary systems, subjects which have been neglected for far too long by the academic profession. As long as we remain ignorant of how monetary systems operate, for so long will the public good that is money be captured to serve only the interests of the tiny, greedy minority in possession of private wealth

To really ‘take back control’, democracies must reclaim power over the production of money

Democracy has failed to protect society from the predatory behaviour of global financial markets, writes Ann Pettifor. Drawing on her new book, she explains why the monetary system has made society vulnerable, and how it needs to be transformed

SUSTAINABLE PARTNERSHIPS: An empirical study into matched sustainable behaviour within married and cohabiting opposite sex couples living in the UK

This is an exploratory study into the behaviour of people living in the same household. Through it I have two main aims. The first is to discover the extent to which two people living in the same household follow the same sustainable or non-sustainable household behaviours. The second is to try and explain this behaviour by testing three particular theories for correlated behaviour suggested by Manksi (1993). Using Understanding Society, a nationally representative study of households in the UK, I examine the sustainable behaviour of over 7,000 married or cohabiting couples. My findings suggest that couples behave similarly. The first theory for this behaviour is that they face a common set of enablers or constraints to sustainable behaviour and I find this explanation has some value with respect to heating, electricity and water use in the home. The second theory suggests couples support each other’s views making them more or less likely to behave similarly. Here I find that individual probability of either behaving more or less sustainably is increased when couples agree on climate change giving some support to this explanation. The third theory suggests that common sustainable practices in the home are the result of within couple influence. Through a mechanism which I refer to as ideological exchange, I find that where couples are ideologically opposed to each other, for certain behaviours, increased social exchange results in a higher probability of matched behaviour. Interestingly, differences in the effects observed, suggests that the outcome of any interaction is also determined by household responsibilities held