WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR CLIMATE FRIENDLY ENERGY IN ROMANIA. ASOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Authors: Laura Nistor
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The author intends to focus on the individuals’ choices with the aim of establishing those micro-level factors which significantly increase the likelihood of financial support for climate change mitigation in the case of Romania. The analysis builds on the databases of the 2008 and 2009 Special Euro barometers on Europeans’ attitudes towards climate change. The dependent variable is the willingness to pay for climate friendly energy (i.e. for energy produced from sources which generate less greenhouse emissions), used firstly in the form of a binary variable (yes vs. no) and subsequently in such a way as to indicate the degree of financial support (if yes, how much respondents are willing to pay). Results suggest that in both 2008 and 2009, appreciatively one third of the Romanian respondents declared willingness to pay for climate friendly energy which is significantly below the European average. Moreover, Romania provides one of the highest percentages of indecisive respondents. Statistical models underscore the fact that in-principle willingness to pay is determined by climate-change attitudes, education and age, while income plays only a marginal role. On the other hand, the proclivity to invest higher amounts of money in clean energy is dramatically dependent on the respondents’ income and illustrates the relevance of the economic model in explaining the willingness to pay.

Keywords

EN

CLIMATE CHANGE; ENERGY; CONTINGENT VALUATION; ROMANIA; SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Sociológia (Sociology)
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 565 – 588

Contributors

author

Laura Nistor

• Social Science Department, Sapientia – Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania