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American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

Limited Attention and the Residential Energy Efficiency Gap

Karen Palmer; Margaret Walls

Resources for the Future, 1616 P St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036 (e-mail: )

open access

Abstract

Inattention may be an important contributor to the energy efficiency gap and may be particularly acute in residential buildings where many different features will determine a home's energy use. Energy audits can provide information on how to reduce energy loss in a home, but the use of audits is rare. We use data from a national survey of 1700 homeowners to study the factors affecting a home owner's choice to have an audit. We create an index of energy inattention for our survey respondents. This index and two additional behavioral factors prove to be important determinants of the audit choice.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20151009
Volume
105
Issue
5
Pages
192-195
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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