The energy transition: An assessment of drivers and barriers

Embedded in an introductory and a concluding chapter, the thesis comprises six distinct but related scientific articles. All articles contribute to a more holistic understanding of drivers and barriers of a successful energy transition. In the first part of the thesis, four articles address energy and economic efficiency in the electricity sector. These articles provide guidance for efficient regulatory policies and analyse measures seeking to increase preferences for dynamic electricity tariffs. The two articles in the second part address the effect of contextual changes on individuals' pro-environmental preferences and behavior. Both articles highlight the large potential of targeted approaches to increase pro-environmental engagement. In the first article of the thesis, we analyse the relationship between the regulatory policy “revenue decoupling” and electricity customers’ energy demand and efficiency in the U.S. electricity sector. Overall, we identify a significant negative correlation between decoupling and electricity consumption. However, the implementation year, which serves as a reference point for later price adjustments, is associated with increasing electricity demand. Therefore, our results suggest that utilities anticipate the implementation of decoupling, allowing them to partially reap the associated benefits. In the second article, we propose a universal mechanism to design dynamic electricity tariffs and analyse their capabilities to overcome households’ adoption barriers. Our results suggest that price signals should not follow the spot price, but rather predicted load pattern or the renewable energy supply to enhance German households’ monetary savings and their CO₂ emission reductions. These factors are also better suited to internalize scarcity signals from the electricity grid or negative externalities from CO₂ emissions. In the third article, we evaluate a stated choice experiment on dynamic electricity tariffs based on two representative household surveys from Germany and Japan. The experimental design allows to disentangle inter- and intraday price changes. Japanese respondents are generally more open to dynamic pricing. Interestingly, respondents are largely indifferent to the number of price changes per day, but prefer stable price pattern. Furthermore, we find highlighting the environmental benefits associated to dynamic tariffs as suitable tool to reduce households' aversions to these tariffs. In the fourth article, I use survey data to analyze the determinants of smart meter-related data privacy concerns and, based on choice experiment, whether these concerns affect households' preferences for dynamic electricity tariffs. The analysis reveals the mediating role of smart meter-related data privacy concerns for households' aversion to dynamic pricing. Furthermore, providing respondents with information on the external handling of their consumption data primarily reduces aversions of respondents with high data privacy concerns. In the fifth article, we use a survey experiment to investigate whether spatial climate messages increase the willingness to pay of cinema visitors for an inclusion of public transport fares in cinema tickets and their willingness to use public transport in case such a combined ticket is introduced. Our results show that only the global treatment increases subjects' willingness to pay compared to the local treatment and the baseline. Both treatments increase subjects' willingness to use public transport. In the sixth article, we use field experimental data to analyze the interplay between signaling or receiving social information and donors’ inherent level of altruism. We find that having the chance to set a positive example is particularly appealing to individuals with high levels of altruism, while exposure to such a social norm predominantly enhances charitable giving among low-level altruists.