Any Data or None at All? Living with Inaccuracies in Self-Reports of Residential Energy Consumption

Accuracies of self-reports of household energy consumption were examined among a sample of 2,090 electricity and 1,699 fuel oil and natural gas consumers. Information obtained from self-reports allowed an increase in response of 37% over what could be obtained from utility company files. Errors in measures as a result of self-reporting ranged between 10.5 and 29.3%, depending upon fuel type and Ss' household receipts. There was no apparent tendency toward systematic over- or underreporting, with the exception of underreporting among larger users. Self-reports correlated more highly with actual consumption than did scores computed to replace missing data. Relationships among variables did not vary significantly between subgroups of Ss for whom utility records were and were not obtained. Thus, researchers' use of self-reports of household energy consumption produces no great error, either in terms of parameter estimation or in the calculation of relationships among variables, and it reduces the number of missing observations. (22 ref)