College of Agriculture & Natural Resources

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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Author: search.filters.author.Gans, Will

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    Individual and Public-Program Adaptation: Coping with Heat Waves in Five Cities in Canada
    (MDPI, 2011-12-16) Alberini, Anna; Gans, Will; Alhassan, Mustapha
    Heat Alert and Response Systems (HARS) are currently undergoing testing and implementation in Canada. These programs seek to reduce the adverse health effects of heat waves on human health by issuing weather forecasts and warnings, informing individuals about possible protections from excessive heat, and providing such protections to vulnerable subpopulations and individuals at risk. For these programs to be designed effectively, it is important to know how individuals perceive the heat, what their experience with heat-related illness is, how they protect themselves from excessive heat, and how they acquire information about such protections. In September 2010, we conducted a survey of households in 5 cities in Canada to study these issues. At the time of the survey, these cities had not implemented heat outreach and response systems. The study results indicate that individuals’ recollections of recent heat wave events were generally accurate. About 21% of the sample reported feeling unwell during the most recent heat spell, but these illnesses were generally minor. Only in 25 cases out of 243, these illnesses were confirmed or diagnosed by a health care professional. The rate at which our respondents reported heat-related illnesses was higher among those with cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, was higher among younger respondents and bore no relationship with the availability of air conditioning at home. Most of the respondents indicated that they would not dismiss themselves as “not at risk” and that they would cope with excessive heat by staying in air conditioned environments and keeping well hydrated. Despite the absence of heat outreach and education programs in their city, our respondents at least a rough idea of how to take care of themselves. The presence of air conditioning and knowledge of cooling centers is location-specific, which provides opportunities for targeting HARS interventions.
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    The Role of Prices and Information in Residential Energy Consumption and Investment Behavior
    (2012) Gans, Will; Alberini, Anna; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Good stewardship of the planet's natural resources is the central challenge of our age, and energy generation and usage has become an important dimension of the current debate about sustainability. Americans spend approximately 5% of household income on energy, and over the last few decades--and as recently as with President Obama's stimulus package of 2009--many government policies have been targeted at residential energy efficiency. Improving energy efficiency would reduce total energy usage, emissions associated with generation of power from fossil fuels, and reliance on imports of such fuels. In this dissertation, I analyze three key aspects of residential energy behavior and their impact on policy. The first is elasticity of energy demand with respect to price. Earlier estimates span a wide range, due to the differing geographic coverage and time scales used in each study. In Chapter 3, I estimate a residential demand function for energy on a recent, nationwide panel of U.S. homes, and find higher price elasticities than previously documented. These results suggest that residential consumers are price responsive in their energy consumption. How they respond to price is the topic of Chapter 4, where I estimate a series of demand functions for energy efficiency improvements, and focus on the role of moving on energy investment. I find that households that move within 2 years are 20% less likely to invest in heaters than those who do not move, suggesting that homeowners do not believe that energy efficiency is capitalized into the value of the home. Requiring disclosure about the energy efficiency of a home during the sales process may remedy this disincentive. In Chapter 5, I use data from an original survey of households to examine how consumers value future savings from energy bills vis-à-vis money. I find that consumers apply a lower discount rate to energy savings than to money, suggesting that market failures, rather than consumer bias, may be responsible for a low rate of residential energy efficiency investment. Taken together, these findings contribute a greater understanding of residential energy behavior, and underscore the potential for intelligent policy to achieve energy efficiency goals.