Huebner, Gesche;
Watson, Nicole;
Fell, Michael;
Shipworth, David;
(2024)
Consumer preferences for business models with multiple electricity suppliers: Online choice experiments in the United Kingdom.
Energy Research and Social Science
, 109
, Article 103403. 10.1016/j.erss.2023.103403.
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Abstract
Under the UK's ‘supplier hub principle’, consumers have a single, licensed electricity supplier at a time that interfaces between the consumer and the energy system. Allowing consumers to have multiple electricity suppliers at a time is a proposed solution to enabling models such as peer-to-peer trading, local electricity supply, and managed operation of smart appliances and vehicle charging. This would allow engagement with innovative energy models whilst having a large-scale supplier meeting remaining demand. However, there is limited evidence regarding how consumers would respond to the complexities of buying electricity from multiple suppliers. We conducted three online Adaptive Choice-based Conjoint experiments on a nationally representative sample of the UK population (n = 1438, across three studies) and one using a sample of UK electric vehicle owners (n = 466). Participants were presented with one of four use cases of multiple-supplier models: local energy, peer-to-peer, smart home tariffs, and electric vehicle tariffs. The experiments measured participants' interest in buying a portion of their electricity from the presented model and tested the acceptability of various aspects of interacting with multiple suppliers. Participants showed extremely high interest in all use cases tested, although engagement was lower when the tariff was recommended by an entity involved in delivering it. Overall, use cases facilitated by multiple suppliers had high acceptability, but long contracts, third party involvement, and multiple bills reduced stated likelihood of engagement. This implies that, whilst consumers would like the benefits delivered by multiple suppliers, there is reluctance to accept additional complexity these market arrangements would bring.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Consumer preferences for business models with multiple electricity suppliers: Online choice experiments in the United Kingdom |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.erss.2023.103403 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103403 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Local energy, Multiple suppliers, Peer-to-peer energy trading, Smart tariffs, Electric vehicle tariffs, Adaptive choice-based conjoint |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10186092 |
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