2011 Volume 9 Pages 724-739
In order to understand the energy consumption patterns of different cities with varied economic development level in Asia, as well as examine the effects of car ownership and self-selection on household energy consumption behavior, four representative megacities, Tokyo, Beijing, Jakarta, and Dhaka were selected and a questionnaire survey about household energy consumption covering more than 1,000 households was conducted at each city in 2009. Based on the survey data, Heckman’s latent index model is further built for each city by separating the effect of the car ownership itself and the effect of self-selection. The results showed that, on average, the effect of car ownership itself on the increase of household energy consumption accounts for 90.13% in Tokyo, 86.59% in Beijing, 78.31% in Jakarta, and 69.07% in Dhaka. While the effect of self-selection accounts for 9.87% in Tokyo, 13.41% in Beijing, 21.69% in Jakarta, and 30.93% in Dhaka.
