The role of energy, financial attitudes and environmental concerns on perceived retrofitting benefits and barriers: Evidence from Irish home owners

Although widespread adoption of energy performance technologies in residential buildings is necessary to tackle the current environmental and energy crises, it progresses very slowly. Using survey data collected from Irish homeowners, we investigate how retrofit behaviour and the perception of benefits and barriers of different energy performance retrofits are associated with household characteristics, as well as environmental and financial attitudes and attitudes toward energy efficiency. We find that household heads with pro-environmental attitudes and those anticipating positive health outcomes from energy efficiency retrofits are more likely to expect financial benefits and less likely to anticipate high levels of disruption from installing various retrofit measures. Environmental concerns are also associated with a higher likelihood of planning to do multiple retrofit types. Being confident in making energy-related decisions is associated with a lower likelihood of perceiving problems in the retrofit process. Not having enough information is an important barrier for some income groups. These findings provide evidence of hidden costs and benefits of energy performance retrofits that normally escape the analysis of academics and policy makers.