On the relationship between residential energy expenditure and building factors, socio-demographic variables and appliances

A precise understanding of the relationships between household characteristics and residential energy consumption is needed to support the implementation of effective energy policies and to improve the prediction of forecasting modeling approaches. This paper contributes to the present-day and analyses the building factors, socio-demographic variables and appliances contributing to high-energy expenditures (electrical energy, thermal energy and total energy) in Italian households. The proposed study builds on an earlier work performed by the authors, which identified the determinants of the household energy expenditure characteristics, based on a nationally representative survey (the “household Budget Survey: microdata for research purposes - 2015” performed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, ISTAT). In particular, this study completes and extends the previous research by applying the odds-ratio analysis to the previously identified determinants, in order to identify the factors that led to high electricity consumption (electrical energy, thermal energy and total energy). In conclusion, this paper contributes to a more precise understanding of the factors that certainly affect the energy expenditure