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Literature on residential water demand is rich, however, there are few estimates of price and income elasticities for Central and Eastern Europe and for countries undergoing economic or political transitions. To cover this gap, we estimate residential water demand in the Czech Republic - which has undergone deep structural, institutional and economic changes over the last three decades. Specifically, we analyse residential water demand from 1993-2016, when the price of water almost tripled, water consumption decreased by a third, and families became considerably richer. Controlling for price endogeneity, our estimates of price and income elasticity indicate low responsiveness of households. The estimate of income elasticity is about +0.16 and robust across all model specifications, and the effect of income is decreasing with household wealth. Price elasticity is low on average, about -0.22, which is on the low end of existing estimates of demand elasticity. While Czech households were more responsive to price changes during the 1990s period of economic transformation, in particular when household incomes were not increasing much, with the implied price elasticity of about -0.50, households became completely price irresponsive during the economic boom in the 2000s, even when the price of water was increasing considerably.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether we can find, behind the richness of energy-saving behavior, more general behavioral patterns. Specifically, this study compares the one-factor confirmatory model, the two-factor confirmatory model, and the Rasch model, which embody alternative assumptions about the dimensionality of energy-saving behavior. Unlike previous studies, this study uses a confirmatory approach to the testing of alternative models, and covers 10 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries ( N = 10,251). This makes our tests rigorous and generalizable beyond a country-specific context. Our results indicate that energy saving is a one-dimensional class of behavior that is a function of individual's propensity to engage in energy saving and the difficulty of energy-saving behavior. The Rasch model provides a valid and parsimonious representation of energy-saving behavior that outperforms the one- and two-factor models. We also show that the curtailment–efficiency dichotomy is not empirically valid.

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This book strives to present the results of research into the consumption of goods and services in Czech households. The first two chapters focus on the effect of consumption on the environment and theoretical approaches towards consumption and behaviour analysis. The remaining five chapters look into consumer behaviour and its significant effect on the environment, such as a demand for energy and transport, energy-saving measures in households, car ownership and organic food consumption. This book aims to point out the environmental effects related to these types of behaviour and provide new

This book strives to present the results of research into the consumption of goods and services in Czech households. The first two chapters focus on the effect of consumption on the environment and theoretical approaches towards consumption and behaviour analysis. The remaining five chapters look into consumer behaviour and its significant effect on the environment, such as a demand for energy and transport, energy-saving measures in households, car ownership and organic food consumption. This book aims to point out the environmental effects related to these types of behaviour and provide new.

Despite its importance for policy purposes (including climate policy and the energy transition), evidence about the price elasticity of natural gas demand in the residential sector is very limited and based on inference from situations with modest variation in prices. We focus on a locale and time when price changes were extreme and presumably salient to consumers, namely Ukraine between 2013 and 2017. We exploit the tariff reforms and detailed micro-level household consumption records to estimate the price elasticity of the demand for natural gas. To isolate behavior, attention is restricted to those households that made no structural energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes, and thus kept the stock of gas-using capital fixed. We further examine the short-run elasticity by restricting the sample to a few months before and after the tariff changes. Our results suggest that under extreme price changes, households are capable of reducing consumption, even without installing insulation or making any other structural modifications to their homes. The price elasticity is about -0.16. Wealthier households, people living in multifamily buildings, and heavy users have more inelastic demands. Households reduced consumption even when they received "subsidies," namely lump-sum government assistance, suggesting that when the price signal is sufficiently strong, lump-sum transfers have only a minimal effect on consumption. We also find some evidence that the stronger the salience, the stronger the responsiveness to price, although this effect is modest and may partly overlap with that of income or baseline consumption. Our data also suggest that the consumers with the lowest uptake of energy efficiency improvements might be those who−by necessity or through skills−are the most productive at reducing energy use through behaviors.

Untapped improvements in energy efficiency in the residential sector may deliver large savings in energy use and the CO2 associated emissions. Yet empirical assessments have been difficult and controversial. We collect monthly natural gas meter readings from a sample of homes in Transcarpathia, in Western Ukraine, an early adopter of the country's trend away from district heating, from January 2013 to April 2017, a period over which the residential natural gas tariffs rose by over 700%. We combine the monthly meter readings with documentation about each household's heating-related energy efficiency upgrades to the home (wall, attic or basement insulation; new windows; boiler replacement, and insulation around pipes) to form a panel dataset. We estimate the effect of the energy efficiency renovations on natural gas consumption, controlling for weather, income and government energy assistance. The decision to do the renovations and natural gas consumption are likely endogenous (people do the renovations because they hope to consume less), so we instrument for the renovations by creating a cross-validation instrument based on a supply-side argument. Even for a given type of energy efficiency upgrades, the estimated effect of the renovations varies dramatically in magnitude, depending on whether the renovations are instrumented for and on how detailed the fixed effects are. The coefficients on the renovations are almost always negative in our regressions, but practically and statistically significant only when we instrument for the renovations. This is in agreement with our respondents' difficulty assessing whether the renovations had saved them gas or money. The IV estimates indicate that insulation delivers 13-24% reductions in natural gas usage, and up to a 5% internal rate of return (IRR) to the investment over 20 years. Judicious use of an existing government program can yield positive IRRs and make energy efficiency upgrades a good investment in a generally poor-performing housing market.