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

Occasions, people and places for pork consumption in Europe. Empirical findings from the Q-Porkchains pan-European consumer survey

Objective: to describe the occasions when, the places where and people with whom respondents reported pork meat consumption. Design & Setting: Cross-sectional web based survey in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and Poland, January 2008, with quota samples on gender (male, female), age categories (20- 44y and 45-70y), and locality of residence (urban, rural with low pig production density and rural with high pig production density). Subjects: 2437 respondents (51% women, 49% men; mean age 41.4 y SD 13.1). Methods: Online computer based survey, including sociodemographic information, anthropometrics (weight, height), and further questions on frequency of pork consumption (30 common items, 17 country-specific items), the occasions (working day, any day, weekend, special occasions), the company (alone, with family, with friends, with others) and the place of actual consumption (at home, outside of home). Results are aggregated for the five European countries. Results: Tenderloin, mignonette, brochette together with pork shoulder ranked as the first choices for weekend and special occasions. The most out-of home consumed products are mixed gyros-pita meat, pork based brochette, pizza, small cuts, marinated meat, escalope, shoulder, tenderloin and mixed meat. The Greek country specific Sygglino, Tigania, and the Country-style sausage are amongst the main preferences for out of home consumption. At European level, most products are consumed at home and with the family. Meat products such as salami, ham, and similar products are amongst the first choices when eating alone. Semi-processed meat like brochettes, small cuts and marinated or ready to eat dishes as gyros-pitas and pizza are the main choice for eating in the company of friends. Conclusions: European respondents seem to make specific choices of food depending on to the occasions, the places and the company. This information highlights the potential orientation of consumers towards fresh meat for special occasions or weekends, and more processed and convenient products when alone or socializing. This information is also useful to address interventions aiming at the improvement of food related health in Europe.Occasions, Pork consumption, Europe, Q-Porkchains, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

A theoretical and empirical investigation of nutritional label use

Due in part to increasing diet-related health problems caused, among others, by obesity, nutritional labelling has been considered important, mainly because it can provide consumers with information that can be used to make informed and healthier food choices. Several studies have focused on the empirical perspective of nutritional label use. None of these studies, however, have focused on developing a theoretical economic model that would adequately describe nutritional label use based on a utility theoretic framework. We attempt to fill this void by developing a simple theoretical model of nutritional label use, incorporating the time a consumer spends reading labels as part of the food choice process. The demand equations of the model are then empirically tested. Results suggest the significant role of several variables that flow directly from the model which, to our knowledge, have not been used in any previous empirical work

The value of region of origin, producer and protected designation of origin label for visitors and locals: the case of Fontina cheese in Italy

Purpose: Food and tourism have a very close relation and food can be considered an essential tourism resource. This research is focused on the analysis of consumers’ and tourists’ food buying behaviours. The aim of this paper is to understand the value that can be generated by linking a typical food product to the region of origin/producer/certification. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that these elements (region of origin, producer and certification) have a different weight for consumers living in different places. Moreover, the research aims at segmenting typical food product consumers, to enable producers and tourism operators to achieve communication goals effectively. Methodology: The paper is based on an empirical survey of locals and visitors that considers the case of Fontina cheese, a typical Italian cheese. Findings: The research reveals that the origin of the product is, generally, more valued than protected designation of origin (PDO) certification. The perceived value of these attributes is then found to vary according to the distance between the region of origin of the product and consumers’ residence. In particular, the importance of PDO certification for consumers increases with increasing distance from the region of origin of Fontina cheese. PDO is thus valued more by tourists than by locals. Originality/value: The analysis supports and builds on previous studies on the importance of PDO certification (Bruwer and Johnson 2010; Dimara and Skuras 2005). Importantly, this work contributes by eliciting consumers’ preferences for PDO according to territorial differences. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Quantitative modelling of why and how homeowners decide to renovate energy efficiently

Understanding homeowners' renovation decisions is essential for policy and business activity to improve the efficiency of owner-occupied housing stock. This paper develops, validates and applies a novel modelling framework for explaining renovation decisions, with an emphasis on energy efficiency measures. The framework is tested using quantitative data from a nationally-representative survey of owner-occupied households in the UK (n=1028). The modelling advances formal representations of renovation decisions by including background conditions of domestic life to which renovating is an adaptive response. Path analysis confirms that three conditions of domestic life are particularly influential on renovation decisions: balancing competing commitments for how space at home is used; signaling identity through homemaking activities; and managing physical vulnerabilities of household members. These conditions of domestic life also capture the influence of property characteristics (age, type) and household characteristics (size, composition, length of tenure) on renovation decisions but with greater descriptive realism. Multivariate probit models are used to provide rigorous, transparent and analytically tractable representations of the full renovation decision process. Model fits to the representative national sample of UK homeowners are good. The modelling shows that renovation intentions emerge initially from certain conditions of domestic life at which point energy efficiency is not a distinctive type of renovation. The modelling also shows clearly that influences on renovation decisions change through the decision process. This has important implications for policy and service providers. Efficiency measures should be bundled into broader types of home improvements, and incentives should target the underlying reasons why homeowners decide to renovate in the first place

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

Managing NSD Multifunctional Teams: An Internal Market Orientation Perspective

No abstract available

Rintracciabilità, qualità e sicurezza alimentare nella percezione dei consumatori

I coautori sono affiliati a: Agricultural University of Athens (Grecia)