Households’ preferences for wood in home heating systems: Does sustainability matter?

This study investigates the preferences of Italian home-owners when choosing to buy wood for home heating systems. The focus is on understanding the influence of different dimensions of sustainability on consumer choices. For this purpose, we designed a survey including a discrete choice experiment and administered it to residents in Italy. Our findings reveal that, on average, respondents pay particular attention to wood cultivation systems. However, forest property regime was considered second in terms of importance after wood price. Further analysis found that our sample presents four clusters of wood consumers. These findings showed considerable heterogeneity among respondents, the majority of whom considered important wood cultivation practices and appreciated forest landscape beauties for their decision. Local origin of wood was considered important by the majority of respondents, even if, surprisingly, a group of interviewees preferred foreign wood. To achieve better results and effectiveness in improving sustainable practices of the domestic heating systems, a combination of policies should be used simultaneously. Our results support the hypothesis that policymakers could achieve better results in terms of sustainability by applying a combined policy that levers the importance citizens accord to the different characteristics of wood in home heating systems.