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6. Survey Results

6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances

6.8.1. Number of appliances

6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

HiFi-System Dishwasher Air-conditioner

Dryer Freezer Refrigerator

Combined Refrigerator-Freezer Water-cooker Espresso-maker

Conservativ well-off Liberal well-off Reflexives

Conventionalist Success seekers Hedonists

Traditional worker Home-centred Entertainment seekers

% of households with one or more ...

Stuttgart

Electrical Appliances by Lifestyle

Figure 6.3.: Electrical Appliances by Lifestyle in Stuttgart

To test the hypotheses that lifestyle has a significant influence on appliance ownership, we start with significance tests regarding the number of appliances to be found in households of the different lifestyle groups. For each lifestyle group an adjusted Wald test - taking into account the sampling weights - is performed in order to see whether it differs significantly from the rest of the sample of the respective city in regard to the number of appliances per household. Table 6.28 shows that in Stuttgart the traditional workers have significantly less appliances per household than the entertainment seekers, which is also the case for Lyon,

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

HiFi-System Dishwasher Air-conditioner

Dryer Freezer Refrigerator

Combined Refrigerator-Freezer Water-cooker Espresso-maker

Conservativ well-off Liberal well-off Reflexives

Conventionalist Success seekers Hedonists

Traditional worker Home-centred Entertainment seekers

% of households with one or more ...

Lyon

Electrical Appliances by Lifestyle

Figure 6.4.: Electrical Appliances by Lifestyle in Lyon

where also theconventionalists differ from the group of reference on a low level of significance. The difference in number of appliances between Stuttgart and Lyon is not statistical significant12.

After testing for significant differences between lifestyle groups, we want to determine which lifestyle dimensions are responsible for the group differences and whether sociodemographic variables or lifestyle dimensions have a more pro-nounced influence on the dependent variable. To do so, the scores of the lifestyle dimensions modernity and standard of consumption are used instead of the dum-mies, because combining all lifestyle dummies with sociodemographic and other information would further reduce cell count for the regression estimates and the number of cases available for analysis is already rather small. The dummy for nationality was insignificant in all of the three models reported so it had been

12Adjusted Wald test: p= 0.273

6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

% of households with ...

Dishwash er

Air-Conditioner

Dryer

Comb

ined Cooler-Freeze r

Freeze r

Refrigerator

Notebook Deskt op

Electrical appliances by country

Stuttgart Lyon

Figure 6.5.: Electrical appliances by country

excluded from the regression models. As shown in Table 6.29, both lifestyle di-mensions are correlated to the number of appliances in the household, but only on a rather low level of significance and explaining only very little variance (1.2 %).

Obviously, socio-demographic variables like household income, number of persons living in the household, age, etc. can be expected to have a high influence on the number of appliances to be found in a household. Level of education of the respon-dent had no significant correlation and was therefore excluded from the model. To compare the effects of these variables, a second model with socio-demographic vari-ables as regressors and housing data is shown in the second column. It shows that socio-demographics have a much bigger explanatory power regarding the number of appliances, explaining 41.9 % of variance. In a last step, sociodemographic and lifestyle variables are included in the regression, in order to see if the lifestyle groups give additional information when we control for socio-demographics (third

column). Summarizing the results of the three models, none of lifestyle dimen-sions remain to have a significant influence on the number of appliances when controlling for socio-demographics and living space, but almost all of the variance is explained by the socio-demographic variables and by living space, which – in addition – are on a much higher level of significance. The fact that the effects of the socio-demographic variables stay very similar between model 2 and 3 hint to a robustness of these results. By each additional person in the household, the number of appliances to be expected rises by 1.7 (only by .83 if it is a child), which is the strongest influence among the variables included (29 % of the variance could be explained by using only this information). Household income alone can explain about 21 % of the variance in the dependent variable; being one category higher in household income adds about .3 to the average number of appliances, meaning that the difference between households of the lowest income category (less than 800e) and the highest category (more than 5000e) is ca. 2.8 when controlling for lifestyle, number of persons, living space and age. The age of the interviewee has a negative influence on the number of appliances (each additional year lowering the average by .04), while each m2 of additional living space raises the number of appliances by .03; the age of the respondent alone can explain about 3.5 % of variance, living space alone about 23 %. It has been tested if environmental con-sciousness, the NEP-scale and the importance of energy saving have an influence on the dependent variable, which was not the case and is why they are not included in the models.

There is evidence in the literature that the determinants of ownership of different electric appliances vary to a great degree, and that sometimes socio-demographic variables can only poorly explain ownership (Weber and Perrels, 2000). Further-more, we need models explaining the ownership of different appliances in order to arrive at an agent based model, that does not rely on statistical averages for the whole population. For this reasons, the rest of this chapter will focus on the determinants of ownership of different household appliances that have a very big influence on households’ electrical consumption. The approach will be similar to the one described above.

6.8. Ownership of electrical appliances

Table 6.27.: Average number of electric appliances by Lifestyle, Nr. of persons and household income

Stuttgart LyonCity Total

Mean SE Mean SE Mean SE

Lifestyle

Conservative well-off 14.3 (0.8) 14.2 (1.3) 14.2 (0.7)

Liberal well-off 14.7 (0.5) 14.0 (0.5) 14.3 (0.4)

Reflexives 14.8 (0.9) 14.1 (0.6) 14.3 (0.5)

Conventionalist 13.1 (0.5) 11.7 (1.1) 12.8 (0.5)

Success seekers 14.1 (0.4) 13.8 (0.4) 14.0 (0.3)

Hedonists 13.3 (0.8) 14.3 (0.6) 13.8 (0.5)

Traditional worker 12.3 (0.6) 10.9 (0.7) 12.1 (0.5)

Home-centered 13.8 (0.5) 13.1 (1.0) 13.5 (0.5)

Entertainment seekers 13.3 (1.0) 12.1 (1.2) 12.6 (0.8)

Total 13.8 (0.2) 13.5 (0.2) 13.7 (0.1)

Number of persons

1 11.7 (0.3) 11.2 (0.3) 11.4 (0.2)

2 14.4 (0.2) 14.1 (0.3) 14.2 (0.2)

3 17.0 (0.5) 16.5 (0.5) 16.8 (0.3)

4 18.0 (0.5) 18.8 (0.8) 18.4 (0.5)

5 18.8 (1.3) 17.1 (1.1) 18.0 (0.9)

6 19.9 (3.5) 23.3 (1.4) 21.6 (1.9)

Total 13.8 (0.2) 13.5 (0.2) 13.7 (0.1)

Monthly net income per household

less than 800 e 11.1 (0.7) 11.3 (1.4) 11.2 (0.6)

800-1500 e 11.8 (0.5) 10.3 (0.4) 11.0 (0.3)

1501-2000 e 12.1 (0.4) 11.7 (0.4) 11.9 (0.3)

2001-2500 e 12.8 (0.4) 12.2 (0.7) 12.6 (0.4)

2501-3000 e 14.9 (0.6) 13.7 (0.5) 14.3 (0.4)

3001-3500 e 16.0 (0.5) 15.1 (0.6) 15.7 (0.4)

3501-4000 e 16.2 (0.7) 15.1 (0.7) 15.7 (0.5)

4001-4500 e 16.4 (0.9) 16.1 (1.3) 16.3 (0.8)

4501-5000 e 16.7 (0.8) 17.6 (0.7) 17.2 (0.5)

more than 5000 e 17.9 (0.8) 16.9 (0.8) 17.4 (0.6)

Total 13.8 (0.2) 13.5 (0.2) 13.7 (0.1)

Table 6.28.: Tests of significance for differences in number of appliances between lifestyle groups

Stuttgart Lyon

p p

Conservative well-off .5539 .6629 Liberal well-off .0658† .4558

Reflexives .2791 .4710

Conventionalist .1463 .0701†

Success seekers .3113 .6584

Hedonists .4531 .3164

Traditional worker .0126* .0002***

Home-centered .9800 .5174

Entertainment seekers .5818 .1742

† p<.1, * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001

Table 6.29.: OLS-regression: Number of appliances

Variable Coef. Lin. SE Coef. Lin. SE Coef Lin. SE

Nr. of adults 1.705⇤⇤⇤ (.259) 1.687⇤⇤⇤ (.267)

Nr. of children .833⇤⇤⇤ (.195) .900⇤⇤⇤ (.204)

Income .279⇤⇤⇤ (.081) .324⇤⇤⇤ (.083)

Age -.047⇤⇤⇤ (.011) -.032⇤⇤ (.012)

Living space

(m2) .031⇤⇤⇤ (.007) .029⇤⇤⇤ (.007)

Modernity .623 (.357) -.373 (.414)

Niveau of

consumption .740 (.338) .689 (.419)

Intercept 10.390⇤⇤⇤ (1.108) 9.266⇤⇤⇤ (.757) 7.600⇤⇤⇤ (1.660)

N 1017 919 893

Adj. R2 .013 .419 .419

Significance levels : : 10% : 5% ⇤⇤: 1% ⇤ ⇤ ⇤: .1%

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