The effect of house energy efficiency programs on the extensive and intensive margin of lower-income households' investment behavior

摘要

This paper examines the biggest house energy efficiency retrofit support program in Greece which ran during 2011-2015 and approximately fifty thousand households participated. We take advantage of an exogenous policy change resulting in cost reduction for households that occurred while the program was running. This change substantially increased the subsidy rate for lower-income households. We find that this effective cost reduction increased the participation rate (extensive margin). We add to the literature on retrofits by further showing that this change increased substantially the investment amount (intensive margin) of these lower-income households. Detailed data on a sub-sample of households reveal that this increase was driven primarily by window replacement and thermal insulation investments.