Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Households' switching behavior between electricity suppliers in Sweden
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, Social Sciences.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7199-7843
2008 (English)In: Utilities Policy, ISSN 0957-1787, E-ISSN 1878-4356, Vol. 16, no 4, p. 254-261Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The overall purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors affecting households' decisions to: (a) switch to a new electricity supplier; and (b) actively renegotiate the electricity contract with the prevailing supplier. The study is based on 536 survey responses from Swedish households and they are analyzed econometrically using probit regression techniques. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework, which embraces both economic and psychological motives behind household decision-making. The results show that households that anticipate significant economic benefits from choosing a more active behavior are also more likely to purse this, while those with smaller potential gains (e.g., households without electric heating) are less likely to change supplier and/or renegotiate their contracts. The impact of overall electricity costs and knowledge about these is particularly important for the latter decision, while respondents that perceive relatively high search and information costs are less likely to switch to an alternative electricity supplier. Moreover, constraints on time, attention, and the ability to process information, may lead to optimizing analyses being replaced by imprecise routines and rules of thumb, and the benefits of the status quo appear to represent one of those simplifying rules. This also opens up for other influences on households' activity such as social interaction and media discourses that raise the attention level. Our results show that these influences are more likely to affect households' choice to switch to new service providers, i.e., the one area of the two investigated here that put the most demand on people's ability to search for and process information.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2008. Vol. 16, no 4, p. 254-261
National Category
Economics
Research subject
Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-3691DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2008.04.005Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-54049100712Local ID: 185fa210-6ea6-11dd-8151-000ea68e967bOAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-3691DiVA, id: diva2:976551
Note
Validerad; 2008; 20080820 (keni)Available from: 2016-09-29 Created: 2016-09-29 Last updated: 2018-07-10Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Ek, KristinaSöderholm, Patrik

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Ek, KristinaSöderholm, Patrik
By organisation
Social Sciences
In the same journal
Utilities Policy
Economics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 237 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf