Stated Preferences for Sustainable Housing Development in Germany—A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Despite enormous progress made in the resource-efficient housing construction as a result of technical innovation, market share of sustainable new housing development in Germany is still very low. There is a need for a demand-driven research approach to determine and exploit the potential for sustainable housing among private home buyers—the principal consumers of new housing in Germany. This study measures the preferences of German home buyers based on stated preferences survey data through the application of a discrete choice experiment. Using latent class analysis, the article identifies market segments of differing “environmental awareness” and corresponding preference heterogeneity. The results point to a latent demand for sustainable housing alternatives among private home buyers in Germany.

Land use trade-offs for flood protection: A choice experiment with visualizations

“…The use of visualization techniques ranges from pictograms and illustrative drawings (e.g., Brouwer and Schaafsma, 2013;Johnston et al, 2002;Morse-Jones et al, 2012;Newell and Swallow, 2012;Nguyen et al, 2013) to photorealistic pictures (e.g., Arnold et al, 2009;Grêt-Regamey et al, 2007;Rehr et al, 2014), 3D visualizations (e.g., Dijkstra et al, 2003;Laing et al, 2005Laing et al, , 2009Rid and Profeta, 2011) and virtual reality representations (e.g., Bateman et al, 2009;Bishop et al, 2009). Visualizations help to convey realistic change scenarios, reduce reliance upon response heuristics, and thereby allow underlying preferences to be more effectively measured (Bateman et al, 2009).…”

“…In some cases, however, the evaluation of a specific attribute in hypothetical scenarios might not be a priori known, e.g., forestation might be positively perceived as improving water retention but might also be negatively perceived influencing visual landscape aesthetics. In these cases and in case, where thorough pre-testing on the perception of specific attributes in the DCE are not possible, literature suggests to extend the scale of the payment vehicle in the DCE and allow for positive and negative levels of the cost attributes (e.g., done by Adamowicz et al, 1998;Rid and Profeta, 2011;Rose and Masiero, 2010). Furthermore, some of the choice set scenarios (e.g., river widening without technical protection) may actually be less costly than maintaining the existing structures over the next 90 years.…”

Comparing text-only and virtual reality discrete choice experiments of neighbourhood choice

“…Of these, the majority has used only verbal descriptions of attributes, although a number have used visual representations of different kinds (e.g. Earnhart, 2001;Hunt, 2001;Jansen et al, 2009;Levine & Frank, 2007;Louviere, 1979;MorrowJones et al, 2004;Orzechowski et al, 2005;Rid & Profeta, 2011;Senior et al, 2006;Tayyaran et al, 2003). Of these, only two have explicitly tested the relative impacts of visual and text-only representations of attributes (Jansen et al, 2009;Orzechowski et al, 2005).…”

“…Reichhart & Arnberger, 2010;Beharry-Borg & Scarpa, 2010;Berninger, Adamowicz, Kneeshaw, & Messier, 2010;Earnhart, 2001;Gret-Regamey, Bishop, & Bebi, 2007;Laing et al, 2005;Levine & Frank, 2007;Louviere, 1979;Morrow-Jones, Irwin, & Roe, 2004;Perdomo, Rezaei, Patterson, Saunier, & Miranda-Moreno, 2014;Rambonilaza & Dachary-Bernard, 2007;Rid & Profeta, 2011;Tayyaran, Khan, & Anderson, 2003;Tilahun, Levinson, & Krizek, 2007). In other cases, visualization techniques have been used explicitly to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of their use (e.g.…”

“…Others have considered just neighborhood choice (e.g. Katoshevski & Timmermans, 2001;Levine & Frank, 2007;Morrow-Jones et al, 2004;Rid & Profeta, 2011), housing choice (e.g. Louviere, 1979;Orzechowski et al, 2005;Timmermans & Van Noortwijk, 1995), or housing location choice (Borgers, Snellen, Poelman, & Timmermans, 2008;Kim, 2006;de D. Ortuzar, Martinez, & Varela, 2000).…”