6. Survey Results
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances
6.8.2. Cooling devices
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances
0.2.4.6.81
Stuttgart Lyon
Cooler-freezer Refrigerator Freezer
Figure 6.6.: Average number of different cooling devices per household in Lyon and Stuttgart
with 8 households reporting not to have a fridge and 5 households having 5 cooling devices. Weighted averages for the distribution of cooling devices by lifestyle and by number of persons in the household can be seen in Table 6.30.
To test for significant differences between the lifestyle groups, several Wald tests on the differences in numbers of cooling devices between lifestyle groups are run similar to the tests in section 6.8. Results (Table 6.31) show that in Stuttgart only the difference between hedonists and the rest of the sample reaches a low level of significance, the same is true for the home centered in Lyon, while the difference between the traditional workers and the rest of the sample is highly significant here. Unsurprisingly the large difference in the average number of cooling devices between Lyon households and Stuttgart households reported in Table 6.30 is significant on the 99.99 %-level.
Regression analysis (Table 6.32) shows that of the lifestyle dimensions only the standard of consumption has a significant correlation on a very low level; together with city of residence it can can explain 12.7 % of variance (column 1); cultural habits seem to play a far more important role here: information about the house-hold being located in Stuttgart or Lyon alone explains 9.5 % of variance. Of the variables about sociodemographics and housing conditions (column 2), living space and number of persons have a highly significant, but relatively small effect on the number of devices; surprisingly, household income and age had no distinct effect in any of the models and were therefore excluded, as well as the level of education of the respondent. Number of persons living in the household and living space alone can explain 12.3 % of variance. When combining both types of predictors (col-umn 3), we arrive at an explained variance of 22.3 %; meaning that cultural habits have a distinct influence on the possession of cooling devices, with on average .4 less devices in Lyon households than in Stuttgart households when controlling for number of persons and living space.
In order to be able to estimate the energy consumption of the refrigerators, respondents were asked about the height and energy efficiency label of their devices.
Table 6.33 shows that the Lyon households on average have significantly14 larger devices, which gives a hint about why Stuttgart households on average have more
14p <0.0001for a Wilcoxon rank-sum test
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances cooling devices: in Stuttgart it seems to be more customary to have separated freezers and refrigerators, while combined cooler-freezers (which are larger) are more customary in Lyon. In general, a combined freezer-cooler is more energy efficient than two separate devices. Table 6.33 shows the distribution of heights by city, lifestyle group, and number of persons.
Regarding the energy efficiency of the devices, the questionnaire included ques-tions about the energy efficiency class of all appliances that have to be labeled according to EU legislation, namely cooling devices, washing-machines, tumble dryers, dish-washers, stoves, and ovens. It was expected that this question would produce a rather high proportion of missing values, nevertheless, it can give infor-mation about the awareness of the label and the level of inforinfor-mation households have about the electricity consumption of their devices. Even though 82.7 % of the households know the European energy efficiency label and 73.8 % stated that they consider the label when buying electric appliances, the missing values for the actual label of their devices ranged from 43.6 % (dish-washers) up to 70.3 % (com-bined cooler-freezers). Since this produces very small cell counts when analyzing the distribution of all efficiency classes, the focus will be on the fact if there are any cooling devices with an efficiency label of A+ ore better to be found in the household, which is the case in 28.7 % of the households. Table 6.34 shows the proportion of households with a A+ or better cooling devices by city, lifestyle, and monthly household net income.
Table 6.35 shows that in Stuttgart, the group oftraditional workers has a signif-icantly lower proportion of households owning cooling devices that have an energy efficiency label of A+ or better, which is also the case for thereflexives, although on a low level of significance. In Lyon, conventionalists have a higher percentage, home-centered a lower percentage of devices with an energy efficiency labeling of A+ or better than the other households. The difference between Stuttgart and Lyon households is significant on the 99 % level according to an adjusted Wald test.
A logistic regression (Table 6.36) shows that the standard of consumption has a significant positive correlation to the probability of owning a A+ cooling device when controlling for the city of residence (column 1). Regressing on
sociodemo-graphics (column 2), only the number of persons per household, household income, and city of residence show a significant correlation. When both types of predictors are put in the same model (column 3), it shows that the standard of consumption has a stronger relation to the probability of owning an A+ device than income, although it explains only very little additional variance. The biggest impact on the probability of owning an energy efficient cooling device was found to be the fact that the energy efficiency label is known; of the attitude scales, only the en-vironmental consciousness shows a positive correlation, although on a low level of significance. Adding these two predictors to the model binds some of the variance before explained by sociodemographics – the significance of the number of per-sons and the standard of consumption drops – and raises the percentage of bound variance to 14.1 %.
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances
Table 6.30.: Average number of cooling devices by lifestyle
Stuttgart LyonCity Total
Mean SE Mean SE Mean SE
Lifestyle
Conservative well-off 1.8 (0.2) 1.1 (0.1) 1.4 (0.1)
Liberal well-off 1.6 (0.1) 1.1 (0.0) 1.4 (0.1)
Reflexives 1.5 (0.1) 1.1 (0.0) 1.2 (0.1)
Conventionalist 1.6 (0.1) 1.1 (0.1) 1.5 (0.1)
Success seekers 1.5 (0.1) 1.1 (0.0) 1.3 (0.0)
Hedonists 1.4 (0.1) 1.1 (0.1) 1.2 (0.1)
Traditional worker 1.6 (0.1) 1.0 (0.0) 1.5 (0.1)
Home-centered 1.6 (0.1) 1.3 (0.1) 1.5 (0.1)
Entertainment seekers 1.3 (0.1) 1.1 (0.1) 1.2 (0.1)
Total 1.5 (0.0) 1.1 (0.0) 1.4 (0.0)
npers
1 1.3 (0.1) 1.0 (0.0) 1.2 (0.0)
2 1.7 (0.1) 1.2 (0.0) 1.4 (0.0)
3 1.7 (0.1) 1.2 (0.1) 1.5 (0.1)
4 2.0 (0.1) 1.4 (0.1) 1.7 (0.1)
5 1.9 (0.3) 1.3 (0.1) 1.6 (0.1)
6 2.2 (0.3) 1.3 (0.3) 1.8 (0.2)
Total 1.5 (0.0) 1.1 (0.0) 1.4 (0.0)
Monthly net income per household
unter 800 Euro 1.4 (0.1) 1.0 (0.0) 1.3 (0.1)
800-1500 Euro 1.3 (0.1) 1.1 (0.0) 1.2 (0.1)
1501-2000 Euro 1.5 (0.1) 1.0 (0.0) 1.3 (0.1)
2001-2500 Euro 1.3 (0.1) 1.0 (0.0) 1.2 (0.1)
2501-3000 Euro 1.7 (0.1) 1.1 (0.0) 1.4 (0.1)
3001-3500 Euro 1.7 (0.1) 1.2 (0.1) 1.5 (0.1)
3501-4000 Euro 1.7 (0.1) 1.2 (0.1) 1.4 (0.1)
4001-4500 Euro 1.9 (0.2) 1.2 (0.1) 1.6 (0.1)
4501-5000 Euro 1.6 (0.1) 1.3 (0.1) 1.4 (0.1)
mehr als 5000 Euro 1.9 (0.1) 1.3 (0.1) 1.6 (0.1)
Total 1.5 (0.0) 1.1 (0.0) 1.4 (0.0)
Table 6.31.: Tests of significance for differences in number of cooling devices be-tween lifestyle groups
Stuttgart Lyon
p p
Conservative well-off .1951 .5034 Liberal well-off .5276 .8281
Reflexives .5008 .7900
Conventionalist .5152 .9063 Success seekers .4411 .9656
Hedonists .0672† .7166
Traditional worker .8056 .0000***
Home-centered .3727 .0725†
Entertainment seekers .1069 .2156
† p<.1, * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
Table 6.32.: OLS-regression: Number of cooling devices
Variable Coef. Lin. SE Coef. Lin. SE Coef Lin. SE
Nr. of persons .074⇤⇤ (.026) .070⇤ (.028)
Living space
(m2) .004⇤⇤⇤ (.001) .004⇤⇤⇤ (.001)
Modernity -.100† (.059) -.007 (.055)
Standard of
con-sumption -.025 (.052) -.109⇤ (.054)
Lyon -.387⇤⇤⇤ (.050) -.413⇤⇤⇤ (.046) -.390⇤⇤⇤ (.049) Intercept 1.859⇤⇤⇤ (.201) 1.023⇤⇤⇤ (.072) 1.301⇤⇤⇤ (.201)
N 917 944 909
Adj. R2 .127 .223 .222
Significance levels : †: 10% ⇤ : 5% ⇤⇤: 1% ⇤ ⇤ ⇤: .1%
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances
Table6.33.:Distributionofcooling-devicesheights(in%) Heightofrefrigerator ca.80cmca.100cmca.120cmca.140cmca.160cm+180cmTotal City Stuttgart23.620.216.79.813.216.5100.0 Lyon6.17.214.415.522.734.1100.0 Total15.814.415.712.317.424.3100.0 Lifestyle Conservativewell-off11.419.614.814.810.129.2100.0 Liberalwell-off15.312.611.413.418.528.8100.0 Reflexives19.015.910.218.012.624.4100.0 Conventionalist25.219.917.814.88.613.6100.0 Successseekers14.214.717.79.221.822.3100.0 Hedonists10.510.113.29.421.435.3100.0 Traditionalworker26.814.715.517.111.214.8100.0 Home-centered15.312.524.59.916.121.8100.0 Entertainmentseekers7.918.117.67.716.132.5100.0 Total16.014.616.011.917.224.3100.0 Numberofpersons 122.617.416.09.715.618.6100.0 212.311.616.714.920.124.3100.0 37.913.812.715.816.133.7100.0 44.78.617.314.315.739.4100.0 50.07.48.516.434.832.9100.0 60.017.611.85.915.749.0100.0 Total15.814.415.712.317.424.3100.0
Table 6.34.: Percentage of households with A+ or more efficient cooling device Stuttgart Lyon TotalCity
% % %
Lifestyle
Conservative well-off 46.5 37.1 42.0
Liberal well-off 37.4 23.6 30.1
Reflexives 51.2 28.2 34.3
Conventionalist 30.2 50.0 34.1
Success seekers 32.5 26.8 30.0
Hedonists 37.1 19.9 27.6
Traditional worker 14.5 25.4 16.5
Home-centered 29.9 9.7 22.8
Entertainment seekers 32.9 25.3 28.4
Number of persons
1 27.0 17.7 23.0
2 34.4 27.9 31.4
3 43.9 25.0 35.6
4 43.5 36.0 40.2
5 43.5 37.5 40.6
6 11.1 66.7 38.2
Monthly household net income
less than 800 e 22.6 14.1 21.1
800-1500e 31.9 21.1 26.4
1501-2000e 21.0 28.0 23.4
2001-2500e 24.9 14.2 21.1
2501-3000e 37.4 20.7 29.1
3001-3500e 50.5 31.8 42.9
3501-4000e 37.1 33.7 35.4
4001-4500e 34.0 16.5 24.9
4501-5000e 47.3 29.0 36.5
more than 5000e 54.0 31.5 41.3
Total 32.5 24.1 28.7
6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances
Table 6.35.: Tests of significance for differences in percentage of households with cooling devices with A+ or better energy efficiency
Stuttgart Lyon
p p
Conservative well-off .1888 .2969 Liberal well-off .3203 .7141
Reflexives .0716† .6819
Conventionalist .6304 .0637†
Success seekers .9677 .6965
Hedonists .5700 .3548
Traditional worker .0003*** .9956
Home-centered .6174 .0056**
Entertainment seekers .9999 .9831
† p<.1, * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
Table 6.36.: Logistic regression: Owning a refrigerator with A+ or better energy efficiency
1 2 3 4
eb Lin. SE eb Lin. SE eb Lin. SE eb Lin. SE
Modernity 1.146 .209 1.176 .227 1.051 .236
Standard of consumption 1.429* .212 1.342† .225 1.266 .248
Lyon .634* .115 .623** .104 .601** .115 .562** .122
Nr. of persons 1.192* .082 1.207** .087 1.158† .096
Income 1.073* .036 1.036 .040 1.029 .046
Know label 5.427*** 2.357
Env. consciousness 1.188† .118
Constant .144*** .077 .247*** .053 .094*** .055 .035*** .026
N 1053 1058 1014 942
McKelvey & Zavoina’s R2 .022 .044 .046 .141
† p<.1, * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001