Research on the Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Chinese Urban Households’ Electricity Consumption Efficiency

Abstract

Improving energy efficiency is a key global policy goal for climate protection. Residential energy consumption has also increased rapidly with the acceleration of China’s urbanization process, there is still a lack of studies that deeply explore the microscopic urban household energy efficiency and the main determinants in China, although urban household energy efficiency has attracted the attention of many scholars. We use a two-step method to analyze the electricity consumption efficiency of Chinese urban households in 2014 and 2016, the changing characteristics of household electricity efficiency who live in two-bedroom houses are measured with data envelopment analysis (DEA) method in the first step and the driving factors of changes are analyzed with Tobit model in the second step. The results show that household electricity efficiency gained a small but significant improvement between 2014 and 2016. Household income, age, and education level of the head of household, and housing type are the main drivers of inefficiency. We also adopt robustness tests, such as Bootstrap truncated regression to find this effect still exists. This information can be used in activities such as subsidized energy-saving equipment, energy audits, and information campaigns that aimed at improving household electricity efficiency, thereby increasing their cost-effectiveness and minimizing electricity consumption.

Keywords

• households’ electricity efficiency
• household services
• DEA
• Tobit regression