District or distributed space heating in rural residential sector? Empirical evidence from a discrete choice experiment in South China

Rural residential space heating is strongly linked to policy considerations related to the clean energy supply and rural sustainable development. As there has been a hot debate on whether to promote district heating in South China, this paper aims to investigate household heating choices with a particular focus on rural residential sector, using the survey data from Sichuan Province. In order to investigate the main influencing factors of household decision-making behaviors, a multinomial logit (MNL) model with sample selection correction and an alternative-specific conditional logit (ASCL) model were used to respectively analyze the actual and stated choices. The estimation results show that energy-specific attributes such as safety level and smoky level have statistically significant effects on household stated preferences for heating systems. Households prefer to adopt lower-cost heating system with high quality energy sources. Among household-specific characteristics, income level, educational level of the decision-maker, household demographic structure, and household location are important determinants of heating fuel choices. These findings suggest that future energy policy should pay more attention to its combined effect on both cost and quality of heating system as well as its different regional effects. Besides, enhancing household socio-economic status should also be attached importance in policy design.