Consumer behavior on energy efficient cooling devices - a case study

Abstract

The energy consumption in developing countries has shown tremendous increase over the last few decades. Moreover, the nationwide final energy demand in Malaysia has increased fivefold over the last two decades due to the total population has doubled in the past 30 years. The Malaysian consumers are believed to have limited knowledge towards energy efficient (EE) products and still pose a rather low environmental conscious behaviour. Various surveys have been carried out by researchers and results have shown an increasing environmental consciousness has extending to great depth effecting consumer behaviour, which eventually expand the green product market remarkably. However no research has been carried out to finding aspects influencing consumers’ tolerance towards price mark-up for green energies and goods. Therefore, this study aims to develop a better understanding of the usage of air-conditioning (AC) systems in the Malaysian households, which is believed to be useful for the advancement of house-cooling technology in Malaysia. Furthermore the study was also tries estimate the carbon emission from the selected cooling devices. This study was based on a survey in which involving 54 respondents from the residents of Sri Samudera Condominium, Johor Bahru. The study found that 9.21% of the respondents have installed the inverter-based ACs. On the other hand, 44.08% of the respondents were uncertain if their ACs is inverter-based or otherwise. They were also not aware of the benefit of inverter-based ACs. However, in average the residents are willing to pay RM1804.17 on an EE cooling device. It is found that the amount they are willing to invest in EE cooling device was not influenced by the frequency of AC usage or their household income