Social comparison of home appliance ownership and use and heterogeneous impact on electricity consumption: a case of apartment households in Korea

Efficient energy demand management in the residential sector must be designed based on a sufficient understanding of factors. This study focuses on apartments, a mainstream housing type in Korea. The combination of factor analysis and quantile regression analysis provides insight into the sociocultural meaning of home appliance ownership and use pattern and the differential impact on electricity consumption. The eight representative home appliances closely related to electricity consumption in the household sector are related to household composition, life cycle, economic ability, education, and occupation type. Additionally, the influence of home appliances on electricity consumption is not constant and is differentiated depending on the consumption level of each household. These attempts can provide customized information on specific housing type groups emerging in the future economic development and urban development process. In residential energy demand management, further segmentation and specification of the target and content of information provision will increase the effectiveness of policy achievement.