Does Climate Influence Households’ Thermal Comfort Decisions?

This paper investigates how households have been adapting to climate change through the use of two technologies important for thermal comfort, air conditioning and thermal insulation. Merging a global gridded dataset of historical temperatures with the 2011 OECD EPIC survey, we study the determinants of installing air conditioning or adopting thermal insulation in response to a warmer climate in eight countries. After controlling for a set of demographic, socio-economic and attitudinal variables, we apply a binary probit model and find that exposure to a warmer climate influences only air conditioning adoption whereas, climatic conditions seem not to affect thermal insulation decisions which, instead, mainly depends on household wealth, dwelling characteristics, age, household size and propensity to energy-saving behaviours. This study does not find any evidence of a possible joint decision for the two technologies.