Consumer’s willingness to pay for green electricity : a meta-analysis of the literature

The number of studies published focusing on people’s preferences for green electricity has increased steadily, making it more and more difficult to identify key explanatory factors that determine people’s willingness-to-pay (WTP). Based on results of a meta-regression our results indicate e.g. that hydropower is the least preferred technology. Variables such as information on the type of power plant that will be replaced by renewables, which are often omitted from primary valuation studies, are important in explaining differences in values as well. When assessing the predictive power of our results for out-of-sample value transfers we find median errors of approximately 30%, depending on model specification.