Refine
Document Type
Zum Sanieren motivieren – Eigenheimbesitzer zielgerichtet für eine energetische Sanierung gewinnen
(2010)
Die Broschüre „Zum Sanieren Motivieren“ präsentiert die wichtigsten Resultate des Projekts "Energieeffiziente Sanierung von Eigenheimen". Adressaten sind Akteure in Politik und Verwaltung im Bereich energieeffizientes Bauen sowie Multiplikatoren in Kommunen, Energie- und Klimaagenturen, Verbraucher- und Umweltorganisationen, Energieberater, lokale Kompetenzzentren und Qualitätsnetzwerke.
Private home owners can reduce their energy use significantly and move towards a low carbon lifestyle by retrofitting their homes in an energy efficient standard. Despite high awareness for energy efficiency and rising energy prices, home owners only slowly take this opportunity to cut down their personal energy use and carbon emission significantly. In many cases, maintenance and repair activities only result in incremental improvements of energy efficiency. Thus, the dynamics of refurbishment seems to have a conservative bias. Against this background, we will present results from an empirical survey, focussing on home owners' maintenance and refurbishment decisions. Drawing on approaches from social-psychology, lifestyle analysis and evolutionary economics, we will explore the impact of attitudes, lifestyle orientations, cognitive frameworks and social resources on refurbishment decision especially on energy efficient ones and present a model integrating the most important driving factors.
Private homeowners can save considerable amounts of energy and money, if they retrofit their homes according to up-to-date energy efficiency standards. From an expert point of view, many of these technical measures are profitable in relatively short payback times, if only additional costs are considered. Apparently, many homeowners do not follow this type of rationality and do solely not regard their refurbishment as an investment. Drawing on the results of an empirical survey of retrofit activities among 1,008 homeowners in Germany, it is argued that refurbishments are the outcome of a broader decision which is shaped by an alliance of economic and non-economic motives and goals. Energy-saving measures is expected to lower the burden of operating costs in a perceptible way and secure the value of the house, but they must also correspond to needs like comfort, convenience or belonging in order to be realized.
