The prevalence of context-dependent adjustment of activity-travel patterns in energy conservation strategies: results from a mixture-amount stated adaptation experiment

People’s adaptive behaviour to increasing energy prices has been studied at length in transportation research. Prior research however has not addressed research questions concerning the contribution of travel-related changes in more encompassing energy conservation strategies. Moreover, context-dependency and choice under constraints has not been studies at any length. In this paper, we therefore report the results of a context-dependent elaboration of a mixture amount choice experiment to measure context-dependent responses to accumulative energy charges under budget constraints. Accounting for consumer heterogeneity in adaptive response behaviour, mixed logit analysis is used to analyse the extent and nature of adaptations of activity-travel behaviour and resource allocation in response to increasing energy costs. The results indicate that individuals are inclined to compensate for increased expenditures on energy due to price increases. Moreover, results show the existence of significant heterogeneity among respondents in terms of their adaptation strategies to various energy-saving choices.