Conveyance, envy, and homeowner choice of appliances

Conveyance, i.e. the fact that an appliance purchased will be left in a dwelling when moving out, may lead homeowners to purchase appliances of lower quality or performance, because the extra costs are not entirely capitalized into the house sales price. Employing a discrete choice experiment with homeowners in the United States, this paper explores the effects of conveyance on homeowners' willingness-to-pay for various attributes of refrigerators. To account for the social nature of purchases when conveyance is likely to occur, it also tests the role of envy (elicited through an incentivized game). The findings provide evidence that conveyors are more likely than non-conveyors to purchase a smaller refrigerator, from a less well-known brand, and with lower customer ratings. In contrast, conveyance was not found to affect homeowners' choices when it comes to energy cost. In addition, envy was found to generally reinforce the negative effects of conveyance on homeowners' willingness-to-pay for several quality and performance attributes. While conveyance and its interaction with envy help explain why some homeowners choose certain quality/performance attributes of appliances, these factors do not appear to explain the energy efficiency paradox.