Relationship between education and households’ electricity-saving behaviour in South Africa: A multilevel logistic analysis

This paper investigates the relationship between the education level of household heads and households’ energy-saving practices at the micro-level in South Africa. It uses the community survey of 2016 as data source. Multilevel logistic models are estimated to account for heterogeneity that characterises the sample data due to the fact that households are nested within municipalities. The findings point to a significant and positive relationship between education level of household heads and households’ energy-saving practices. Based on these results, one can infer that a household whose head is educated is more likely to have light bulbs, switch off lights in the house when not in use, and switch off appliances at the wall (not with remotes) when not in use than household whose heads have no education. Therefore, education offers a tool to incentivise households to save electricity, which will also contribute indirectly to the effort of addressing the challenges of climate change, amongst others.