The role of individual preferences in explaining the energy performance gap

Highlights: • The energy performance gap is explained by individual and environmental characteristics. • Up to 12% of the gap is explained by individual preferences. • Poverty explains restriction behaviours regarding energy consumption. • Strong preferences for comfort could explain energy overconsumption situations. • The rebound effect is partially due to "legitimate" comfort gains after improvement of the energy efficiency of housing because households were previously limiting their energy consumption well below the norm. The aim of this research is to understand the role of socioeconomic characteristics and individual preferences in explaining the energy performance gap in the residential sector. This gap reflects the difference between the theoretical energy consumption of homes assessed by engineering models and real energy consumption. Using the ratio of the two consumption amounts to measure the gap, we perform a quantile regression to tease out the effects of preferences on the entire distribution of the energy performance gap spectrum instead of focusing on the conditional average. As a result, this research provides an original contribution: depending on the direction of the gap, our findings suggest that significant drivers include individual preferences for comfort over economy, which explain up to 12% of the gap variability, and poverty. This context should serve as a reminder to public authorities regarding the issues of rebound effect and household welfare.