Households and sustainable green technologies: A review

There is widespread consensus in the climate research community that households show different attitudes toward the broad spectrum of technologies and policy instruments implemented to reduce CO2 emissions. The aim of this paper is to investigate the monetary aspect of socio-economic acceptability of four sustainable green technologies development: green electricity, energy savings in residential buildings, smart meters and alternative fuel vehicles. We obtained information on willingness to pay, and/or willingness to accept, for such technologies from a sample of 35 papers taken from the literature. We homogenize this information computing an implicit price of a Kg of CO2 avoided, named PCO2. A qualitative analysis is carried out to explain the households' attitude to avoid CO2 in monetary terms. Results show that on average PCO2 is positive. There are, however, some negative attitudes only in the case of alternative fuel vehicles. In conclusion, empirical results show that households have a favorable attitude toward sustainable green technologies, but further research is desirable to design new policies to make the future of the sustainable society more plausible.