Camille Massié will present the paper “Financial incentives and their impact on energy renovation behavior: evidence from the French residential sector” at the 19th ACDD (Augustin Cournot Doctoral Days) of the University of Strasbourg (BETA* laboratory) on May 23 and 24.
This paper analyses the structural barriers that hinder the massive adoption of energy efficiency investments, thus fuelling the energy paradox in France. Based on microdata from 3,000 French homeowners in 2018, a logistic model has been developed to estimate the probability of households to renovate their home. Particular attention is paid to financial incentives for energy renovation work, which take the form of direct subsidies. Taking into account the heterogeneity of dwellings and households, our results suggest the existence of a threshold effect in the impact of financial incentives: below a certain amount of subsidies, households do not feel encouraged to undertake renovation work and simply give up, which is money and effort in vain on the part of the government. Further investigation, via a classification and regression tree (CART) model, indicates that this threshold effect occurs around 3,000 euros of aid. In the context of a rare increase in the budget of the French Ministry of Ecological Transition in 2022, this information is valuable for the design of future energy policies.