Exploring factors affecting household energy consumption in the internet era: Empirical evidence from Chinese households

Household sector is the second largest energy consumption sector after industrial sector. With the increasing popularity of the Internet, empirical studies based on large-scale households to study factors affecting household energy consumption are quite rare. This paper integrates Internet behaviors into structural equation model based on the data of Chinese household energy consumption survey in an effort to find out the factors affecting household energy consumption and explore the relationship between these factors. According to the findings of this study, the increased frequency of using Internet has mitigated the positive effect of income on household energy consumption to a certain extent. This paper also comes to some interesting conclusions. For example, the understanding of energy conservation policies has significantly increased the energy consumption of Chinese households. Moreover, different regions and different types of households are faced with different factors affecting energy consumption. With reference to the characteristics of Chinese households, this paper discusses the possible underlying cause of these conclusions, which is of great significance for Chinese government to formulate targeted energy conservation policies and provides a reference for other countries. [Display omitted] •Large-scale households in China were investigated.•Internet behaviors were integrated to find out the impact factors.•Understanding of energy conservation policies increased energy consumption.•Implicated policies for energy consumption reduction were discussed.