The Influence of Government Environmental Policies and Regulations on Energy Efficiency Advertising of Residential Properties

Governments globally have been frustrated in developing strategies to imbue energy-efficient housing into social acceptance. The Federal and State Governments of Australia have introduced a range of voluntary and mandatory energy efficiency policies to reduce the energy use of individual households. In a free-market economy, real estate agents are expected to play an active role in motivating homebuyers in purchasing energy-efficient housing through advertising. This research aims to examine whether real estate agents effectively responded to the introduction of new government environmental policies and regulations relating to energy efficiency when advertising detached houses in Melbourne. The research examined all detached dwelling advertisements in regional Victoria during the period of 2008 – 2013 with over 40,000 advertisements reviewed. By using time series analyses, histograms, Spearman correlations, and Kruskal-Wallis tests, the dataset was tested to produce evidence whether the appearance of words promoting energy-efficient technologies in housing advertisements was influenced by the introduction of State and Federal government environmental policies relating to housing energy efficiency. Even though there was evidence of temporal increases in the appearance of words and phrases promoting energy-efficient features in housing advertisements when new government environmental policies were introduced, such increases were found to be minor. However, the appearance of such words and phrases increased significantly with the introduction of government environmental policies that were associated with financial benefits for homeowners. Overall, the results highlight that energy efficiency and housing sustainability features were still not considered to be a major factor by real estate agents when advertising residential properties. Therefore more direct action policy related to housing energy efficiency is required.