Unveiling the factors affecting final electricity consumption: does the regional component matter?
International Journal of Energy Sector Management
ISSN: 1750-6220
Article publication date: 29 January 2018
Issue publication date: 4 May 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the developments in final electricity consumption, estimate the portions of changes that can be attributed to national, sectoral or regional factors, and to investigate determinants of the regional component (RC) in Croatia at the subnational level in the period 2001-2013.
Design/methodology/approach
In the first stage, the dynamic shift-share method is used to decompose final electricity consumption, and then, in the second stage, the panel population-averaged logit model is conducted to find the main determinants of the extracted RC.
Findings
The results show that both the sectoral factor and the regional factor are responsible for an increase in electricity consumption over the period considered, whereby the regional specificities had a larger impact in general. Thereby, the most developed regions, including the tourism-oriented ones, exhibited the largest average increase in electricity consumption mainly due to positive effects of the regional-specific factors, while the negative effects of these factors were mainly responsible for low average rates of changes in electricity consumption in less developed regions.
Practical implications
The results suggest that regional-specific energy conservation programs might be more effective in improving energy efficiency than the sector-oriented ones, as well as that socio-economic and contextual determinants matter when it comes to the probability of having a positive regional effect on the electricity consumption rate.
Originality/value
The paper investigated the determinants of the extracted RC which has not yet been addressed in the energy economics literature.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under Grant number IP-2013-11-2203.
Citation
Borozan, D. and Pekanov Starcevic, D. (2018), "Unveiling the factors affecting final electricity consumption: does the regional component matter?", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 202-220. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJESM-10-2017-0011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited