Willingness-to-Pay for District Heating from Renewables of Private Households in Germany

In this article (2020), the authors focus on private household preferences and willingness-to-pay for district heating and district heating from renewables compared to gas condensing boilers and heat pumps. For the study, they decided to apply a discrete-choice experiment and collected data on attitudes towards sustainability, economic aspects and demands for providers of heat supply as dimensions for a factor and cluster analysis in order to apply a market segmentation. The results show that district heating by renewables is the most preferred heating option for households followed by district heating from fossil fuels, heat pumps and gas boilers. Furthermore, the study offers more profound insight into the willingness-to-pay for each heating option and reports interaction effects for the different market segments that could be identified in the analysis.

Authors: Thomas Krikser (University of Kassel), Adriano Profeta (DIL—Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik e.V.), Sebastian Grimm and Heiko Huther (AGFW)

Keywords: district heating, renewables, household preferences, discrete-choice, WTP-space