In-home and out-of-home energy consumption by elderly and non-elderly households: a comparative analysis based on a copula model

Abstract

This paper compares the energy consumption of elderly and non-elderly households, recognizing the ever-increasing importance of the aging population for energy policy. Decisions of the domestic (in-home) and transport (out-of-home) sectors at the household level are jointly incorporated by building a multivariate Hierarchical Archimedean Copula model with intra-sector and inter-sector dependencies. Data from a life-oriented behavioral survey in Japan are used, which includes 532 elderly households and 340 non-elderly households. A variety of life-related factors, together with built environment factors, are introduced into the above model. Modeling analysis results show that inter- and intra-sector dependencies are heterogeneous across households in terms of these factors. It is found that almost equal numbers of influential factors are sensitive and insensitive to age-based sample segmentation. Various similarities and dissimilarities across energy types between elderly and non-elderly households are revealed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the results.

Keywords:

• in-home and out-of-home energy consumption
• elderly household
• dependency
• copula
• life-oriented approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WorldPopulationAgeing2019-Highlights.pdf (Accessed on November 20, 2020).

2 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true (Accessed on November 20, 2020).

3 https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/en/grant/KAKENHI-PROJECT-22246068/ (Accessed on June 1, 2021).

4 https://www.stat.go.jp/data/topics/topi1211.html (in Japanese; Accessed on November 19, 2020).

5 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/youran/indexyk_1_3.html (in Japanese; Accessed on November 19, 2020).