The value of energy efficient housing - is there an incentive to make houses more energy efficient?

Abstract

The basic question of this paper is the following: 'Do energy efficient appartments generate higher rents for their owners than comparable appartments with lower levels of energy efficiency?' This is an important question for environmental policy because if it is ansered positively, it generates an economic incentive for landlords to invest into the energy efficiency of buildings. We use data from the EU-SILC survey for Austria and a hedonic price approach to determine the marginal rent of more energy efficiency (measured in the form of lower heating costs). In this paper we revisit a topic that we have already discussed in a presentation eight years ago. At that time the results were very disappointing. The analysis produced a significant coefficient but with the reverse than expected sign. In the meantime, more waves of the EU-SILC survey have become available and the pool of respondents has been turned over. This allows us to revisit this question and to produce an answer with more empirical support.