地域別電灯・電力需要関数の推定

～価格弾力性の地域間格差要因～

抄録

This study derivates the empirical models of residential and power demand and attempts to measure the price elasticity of residential and power demand among nine power companies. As the general consensus among researchers analyzing electric demand is that electric power demand is extremely inelastic; the price elasticity of electric demand is a priori assumed to be as low as zero or –0.1. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that the values for the price elasticity of residential demand in each region are distributed between –0.14 and –0.64; therefore, it is clear that price elasticity significantly varies from zero in all regions. Further, since the price elasticity values of power demand are between –0.16 and –0.55, it is apparent that these values also significantly vary from zero in all regions. Regional disparities for residential demand were also found. Moreover, we can confirm that a feature of regional power demand is that price elasticity is smaller in urban areas and larger in rural areas. It is understood that power demand is related to the ratio of self-owned power plants.