Energy Literacy: does age matters?

Abstract

Energy literacy is an important tool that empowers consumers, allowing them to make better decisions concerning energy. It involves energy and financial knowledge, citizen's attitudes and intentions, and citizen's habits and behavior related to energy. Thus, the assessment of energy literacy levels gives us a general view of citizen's knowledge, concerns, and habits in the energy context. Many factors may influence these levels, nevertheless, in this paper, we will concentrate our research on age to find some patterns. The influence of age on energy literacy has been studied before, however, the difference found in the factors that influence energy literacy by age group was not studied before, at the top of our knowledge. Our paper aims to fill this gap. We also investigate the relationship between attitude, behavior, and knowledge, within defined age groups. The results show that seniors perform better than the other age groups in energy literacy and all of its dimensions, except on behavior. The results also highlight the importance of financial knowledge and energy awareness to determine energy knowledge and energy literacy, and a strong dual relationship between attitude and behavior.