Speaker
Description
Residential buildings play a central role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, making large-scale energy renovations essential to meet climate objectives. Despite strong policy efforts, renovation rates across Europe remain insufficient. Affordability is widely recognised as a major barrier, as many homeowners lack the financial means to undertake deep renovations. While previous studies have explored either financial capacity or motivation, little is known about how these factors interact. This study applies the Attitude-Behaviour-Context (ABC) model to examine how financial comfort (contextual factor) and personal norms (attitudinal factor) jointly influence homeowners’ decision-making regarding home insulation. The analysis draws on survey data from eight European countries, focusing on homeowners who had not recently insulated their homes. Participants reported their current stage in the decision process, ranging from no renovation plans to concrete implementation plans. Personal norms and financial comfort were measured using Likert scales, alongside psychological, sociodemographic, and dwelling-related covariates. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to test both main and interaction effects. Results show that stronger personal norms are consistently associated with more advanced decision stages, highlighting the motivational role of moral commitment toward energy efficiency. Financial comfort, by contrast, showed a negative association with early-stage engagement, suggesting that financially secure homeowners may feel less urgency to act. No significant interaction effect was found between personal norms and financial comfort. These findings indicate that motivational and financial barriers to renovation operate largely independently, underscoring the need for policies that address both dimensions in parallel to accelerate home insulation uptake.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | Yes |
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| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
