Influencing Factor Analysis on Energy-Saving Refrigerator Purchases from the Supply and Demand Sides

Abstract

The promotion of energy-saving household appliances is important to save energy and reduce emissions to realize peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality. The objective of this study is to evaluate the influencing factors of energy-saving refrigerator purchases from the supply and demand sides. First, we analyze the promotional focus and attention to energy efficiency to reflect the characteristics of refrigerators that are popular with consumers in online purchases. Secondly, descriptive statistical analysis, linear regression equation, and the BP neural network model are used to analyze the current situation of consumers’ purchasing and use of energy-saving refrigerators, exploring consumers’ awareness of energy-efficiency labels and factors affecting the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators. The results show that (1) the energy-efficiency level of consumers’ choices of refrigerators has improved with an increase in income and consumption. The Grade 1 refrigerators account for 55.26% from the supply side and 62.50% from the demand side; (2) energy-efficiency cognition and trust, environmental awareness, and economic motivation have positive effects on purchase intentions towards energy-saving refrigerators; (3) consumers will purchase energy-saving refrigerators that are more expensive but offer higher energy efficiency for the long-term total cost considering that the use cost of energy-saving refrigerators is lower. This study provides a reference to promote energy-saving refrigerators from the perspectives of enterprises, governments, and the public.

1. Introduction

At the 75th session of the United Nations general assembly, China claimed that its government will strive to achieve peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. The government noted that the authority should vigorously develop green consumption, promote green low-carbon products, and improve the certification and labeling systems of green products [1]. About 70% of household carbon dioxide emissions come from household appliances, with air conditioners, refrigerators, and televisions accounting for a total of 50% [2]. According to the survey, refrigerators consume 14.88% of electricity for each household [3]. The national production of household refrigerators reached 86.644 million sets throughout 2022, which demonstrated that promoting energy-saving refrigerators and improving their energy-efficiency levels play a significant role in reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions [4].

Energy-efficiency labels are universally applied to reduce the energy usage of household appliances in many countries [5]. Figure 1 shows China’s energy-efficiency label, including the refrigerator energy-efficiency level, electricity consumption, and cooling capacity. The government issued the maximum allowable values for energy consumption and the energy-efficiency grades for household refrigerators, which classified the energy-efficiency grades of refrigerators under the five categories shown in

Table 1. Energy-efficiency grades of refrigerators.

Energy-Efficiency Grade	Energy-Efficiency Ratio	Content
Grade 1	3.40 and above	The greatest energy–savings and the lowest power consumption
Grade 2	3.2–3.39	Relative energy savings
Grade 3	3.0–3.19	Average level of the market
Grade 4	2.8–2.99	Lower than the market average
Grade 5	2.6–2.79	Market-access standard

[6]. Compared to the classification standard of 2008, the energy efficiency of refrigerators under the new standard increased significantly. The power consumption of Grade 1 is about 40% lower than that of the original standards [6], making it more difficult to produce and sell high-efficiency refrigerators. As a result, it is worthwhile to study how we can promote more energy-efficient refrigerators to consumers in the context of the low-carbon energy transition.

There have been several studies on the purchasing behavior of household refrigerators based on three aspects, including factors affecting the consumption of energy-saving appliances, the ways that energy efficiency influences consumption, and the relationship between energy efficiency and the prices of products. Age, educational background, and environmental consciousness can affect willingness of payment when buying energy-saving appliances, among which annual income is the most important [7]. According to Ren et al. (2021) [8], low-income households in Australia tend to buy less energy-efficient refrigerators. Harajli and Chalak (2019) proved that energy labeling and the cost of electricity affect the willingness to pay for energy-saving appliances [9]. Nie et al. (2021) [10] aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of current subsidy policies for stimulating purchases of energy-efficient household appliances. The results suggested that governments should increase the subsidy for Grade 1 refrigerators. Silvi and Rosa (2021) [11] explored the role of individual temporal preferences in the decisions for energy conservation investments, finding that present-oriented individuals are less likely to purchase energy-efficient appliances. Zhang et al. (2021) [12] revealed that the brand premium is higher than that of the energy-efficiency label, meaning that the brand is more likely to determine the price of an air conditioner and further affect consumers’ purchasing behaviors. When buying products, consumers usually first demonstrate a preference for considering the cost, followed by quality, and then energy consumption considerations [13].

Some research has analyzed how energy efficiency can influence consumption. Consumers are mainly influenced by the energy-efficiency level communicated on the label and are likely to overestimate the energy friendliness of a product assigned a high energy-efficiency rating [14]. By categorizing energy-efficiency-related textual reviews, Ma et al. (2022) [15] used multiple linear regression to prove that both the online reviews and rating scores of the energy star have a strong influence on appliance sales. He et al. (2022) [16] suggested that representing energy efficiency on continuous scales can be used as supportive visual information to facilitate purchase decisions.

Additionally, a few studies focused on the relationship of energy efficiency and product price. Using a hedonic price model, research found that the energy-efficiency label and brand have important impacts on refrigerator price and affect consumers’ purchasing behaviors [17]. However, the suspicion of label information and economic constraints hinder the conversion from reference willingness to purchase intention [18]. Meanwhile, energy-efficiency-labeling policies play a guiding role only for those who purchase mid-to-high-price products, which will lead to price increases for some energy-saving products [19]. Galarraga et al. (2011) [20] indicated that the demand for refrigerators with the highest energy-efficiency label is highly sensitive to price variations, which influence consumer behavior. Park (2017) [21] found that energy-efficient products already had higher prices before the introduction of the energy-efficiency label and that any price premium did not result from the energy-efficiency label itself.

To date, research has mainly focused on consumers’ understanding of energy-saving appliances at the demand side. Some studies analyzed whether energy efficiency will affect the buyers’ purchasing decision and evaluated how income and price affect the consumption of energy-saving refrigerators. However, few studies considered the selling of energy-saving refrigerators from the supply side, and the impact of refrigerators’ brands and energy-efficiency label trust on the consumers’ decisions of purchasing energy-saving refrigerators was ignored in most studies. To fill this gap, we described the impacts of energy-efficiency cognition and trust, environmental awareness, economic motivation, and electricity price incentives on the willingness to buy energy-saving refrigerators from the demand side. In addition, we calculated the proportion of refrigerators of various grade levels and found promotional focus of different brands from the supply side. The motivation of this paper is to analyze the consumer purchase status and evaluate the influencing factors of energy-saving refrigerator purchases from the supply and demand sides.

This study expands the research area and provides practical support for the connection between the demand and supply sides. The contributions are as follows. First, this study emphasizes the synergistic impact of multiple factors, such as brand, volume, price, and energy efficiency, on the promotion of energy-saving refrigerators, offering a practical reference to suppliers on how to publicize refrigerators. Second, we reveal the impacts of energy-efficiency policy awareness and energy-efficiency label trust on the purchase of energy-saving refrigerators from the demand side, providing a theoretical basis for the promotion of energy-saving refrigerators.

The remainder of this study is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the methodology and related data, Section 3 presents the results and discussion, and Section 4 summarizes the conclusions and recommendations.

2. Methodology

As shown in Figure 2, the research process is divided into three parts. First, we collected the promotion and purchase information on 14 January 2022. A web crawler was used to obtain the sales of refrigerators from the supply side. The brands, prices, volumes, energy-efficiency grades, and other information using status indicators of household refrigerators were obtained through a questionnaire survey. We then analyzed the purchasing status and influencing factors of energy-saving refrigerators. From the supply side, according to the results of the word division, we produced a word cloud map showing the promotion and sales of energy-saving refrigerators. We selected more than 50 high-frequency keywords and classified them based on 13 performance characteristics, including refrigerator door style, applicable type, energy efficiency, volume, refrigeration mode, frequency conversion, refrigerating preservation, thickness, odorless, smart, low noise, degermation, and placement. Based on high-frequency words, we evaluated word cooccurrence to indicate the emphasis among enterprises on the promotion of energy-saving refrigerators. We illustrated the proportion of refrigerators with different energy-efficiency grades, and the energy-efficiency distribution among different brands was also revealed. From the demand side, we underlined the consumer purchase status, focus, and influencing factors of buying energy-saving refrigerators with descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and neural networking model. Based on the analysis, we proposed the results considering energy-efficiency level, brand differentiation, and influencing factors. Policy implications were put forward from the perspectives of enterprises, governments, and the public.

2.1. Data Collection Method

On the supply side, we analyzed the sales status of energy-saving refrigerators on JD.com using Python, ranging from information gathering through a web crawler to information segmenting through the Jieba package. Irrelevant words and symbols, such as liters, punctuation, etc., were removed, and keywords related to refrigerator performance promotion, such as energy-efficiency level, volume, door style, etc., were retained for the word frequency analysis, word cloud analysis, and cooccurrence analysis.

On the demand side, we conducted an online survey to investigate the usage of household energy-saving refrigerators. The questionnaire included the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, the use of household refrigerators, and the influencing factors of refrigerator purchasing. The first part mainly examined the basic situation of the respondents’ family populations, educational degrees, occupations, income levels [22], etc. The second part focused on information related to method of purchase, price, usage time, total volume, comprehensive power consumption, and the energy-efficiency grade of the refrigerator in the respondent’s household. The third part investigated the factors affecting consumers’ purchasing of household refrigerators and their awareness of energy-efficiency labels in which we referred to relevant studies to set questions that can better reflect variables. We considered that behavioral intention can significantly affect practical actions [23,24]. As a result, purchase behavior was measured by the following purchase intention: “I will buy a refrigerator with a higher price but greater energy savings if I want to replace the old refrigerator.” Energy prices affect energy consumption [25,26]; thus, energy prices will influence consumers’ decisions to purchase energy-saving refrigerators. This study uses the item “I think high electricity prices can promote the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators.” to measure the variable of “electricity price incentive”. According to the impact of environmental awareness on energy-saving willingness [27], we set the item “I will consider buying more expensive but energy-efficient products for environmental reasons.” to measure the environmental awareness of respondents.

Considering COVID-19 prevention and the dense distribution of consumers, the questionnaire was distributed online to obtain a wide range of data sources. To make the collected data representative, the surveys were filled out by families. The questionnaire was answered by family members participating in a refrigerator purchase, and each family only filled in one copy. We conducted a pre-survey before the formal survey to minimize bias and improve the quality of the recovered data, after which 22 questionnaires were obtained. Confusion reported by respondents and unreasonable questions encountered when answering the questionnaire were fixed and revised to ensure that the questionnaire was concise and easy to read. Ultimately, we produced a questionnaire entitled “Research on the Current Situation and Influencing Factors of Consumers’ Energy-Saving Refrigerator Purchases”.

The questionnaire was issued from 17 January 2022 to 31 January 2022 through the social media platforms of Sojump (version 2.0), Wechat (version 8.0.18), and QQ (version 8.9). In total, 437 families completed the questionnaire in which 101 invalid questionnaires were removed according to factors, such as the total volume of the refrigerator and power consumption. Overall, 336 valid questionnaires were eventually retained, accounting for 76.89%.

2.2. Multiple Linear Regression

The multiple linear regression model was employed for the analysis of the factors influencing the sales of energy-saving refrigerators, as shown in Equation (1):

$$y={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_1{x}_1+{\alpha }_2{x}_2+{\alpha }_3{x}_3+{\alpha }_4{x}_4+\delta$$

(1)

where $x_1$ is an indicator of energy-efficiency cognition and trust about consumers’ awareness and understanding of energy-efficiency labels, $x_2$ represents respondents’ environmental awareness of saving and protecting natural resources, $x_3$ represents the economic driving force of purchasing energy-saving refrigerators, $x_4$ represents the impacts of electricity price incentives for consumers to purchase energy-saving refrigerators, and $y$ represents respondents’ purchase intentions towards energy-saving refrigerators with a higher price.

2.3. BP Neural Network Model

The BP neural network model is a multi-layer forward network model based on the error back-propagation algorithm, which was first proposed by Rumelhart and McCelland in 1986. The model is selected to predict consumers’ decisions because it is a nonlinear complicated network model with solid stability and autonomy to effectively address extremely unpredictable issues and to that extent, eliminates subjectivity in the findings [28]. The BP neural network includes an input layer, hidden layer, and output layer [29]. A large number of tests show that the three-layer BP neural network is very suitable for a prediction model [30,31,32]; thus, this study selected a three-layer BP neural network to analyze the decision to purchase energy-saving refrigerators. Based on the results of the linear regression analysis, the electricity price incentive was removed due to its insignificant impact. To further study the role of energy efficiency when consumers purchase energy-saving refrigerators, energy-efficiency cognition and trust were divided into three factors named “energy-efficiency label trust”, “energy-efficiency concern”, and “energy-efficiency policy awareness”. Here, we use energy-efficiency label trust, energy-efficiency concern, energy-efficiency policy awareness, environmental awareness, and economic motivation as the input layer and purchase intention as the network output variable. The training and testing samples were distributed in proportions of 70% and 30%, respectively. The structure was determined after the average error rate reached an ideal state (Figure 3).

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Supply Side

3.1.1. Refrigerator Performance Promotion

The word cloud map of refrigerator promotion keywords is shown in Figure 4. The size of words represents the degree of attention refrigerator suppliers, i.e., the bigger the font, the more on which the performance is focused. The top four keywords were “household”, “air-cooling”, “frostless”, and “first-class energy efficiency”, which emphasize the public focus of enterprises on refrigerators and product performance factors. It reflects that consumers tend to know the cooling performances of refrigerators when making purchasing decisions and prefer frostless and Grade 1 refrigerators. We found that keywords related to energy-efficiency, such as “Grade 1”, “energy conservation”, and “power saving”, were frequently mentioned in relation to refrigerator sales, which means that the suppliers shed light on energy conservation attributes to buyers.

As shown in Figure 5, door style was the most commonly mentioned keyword in product information with a frequency of 989, indicating that most enterprises regard the refrigerator door style as one of the key points of publicity. In addition, more than 500 products mentioned the applicable type, energy efficiency, volume, refrigeration mode, and frequency conversion in product information, indicating that enterprises attach importance to the promotion of refrigerator functions. Refrigerating preservation, odorless, thickness, and smart were also the promotional focus, with frequency above 200. Finally, the frequency of low noise, degermation, and placement was below 200, which indicates that the enterprises less commonly publicize the performance of these factors and that consumers pay less attention to these factors when buying refrigerators.

The 1000 refrigerators crawled were mainly brand-name products, such as Haier, Midea, and Ronshen. The concurrent relationship between product brand and product publicity performance is shown in Figure 6. The results show that most brands attach significance to the publicity of door style, applicable type, and refrigeration mode. Different brands place different levels of emphasis on refrigerator publicity. For example, brands such as Haier, Midea, and Ronshen pay significant attention to energy-efficiency publicity, while other brands such as Siemens and Panasonic pay less attention to energy-efficiency publicity.

3.1.2. Energy Efficiency

As shown in Figure 7, 55.26% of refrigerators were found to be Grade 1, while 28.33% were Grade 2. In addition, 14.28% of refrigerators were Grade 3 and above. The energy-efficiency ratio ranges of grades are shown in Table 1. Although most of the refrigerators sold were found to be Grade 1, some had Grade 2 or greater energy efficiency.

The top 1000 refrigerator brands were cross analyzed for their energy efficiency, and the results are shown in Figure 8. Haier, Midea, and Melng accounted for a large proportion of refrigerators with Grade 1 energy efficiency comprising about 70%. The refrigerators from Panasonic and Siemens with Grade 2 and above accounted for more than 70%, which indicates lower energy efficiency than that of Haier, Midea, and Melng. It should be noted that brands with low market shares, such as TCL and Frestec, were still found to offer many refrigerators Grade 3 and above.

3.2. Demand Side

3.2.1. Descriptive Statistics

The following are the statistics of the questionnaire.

(1)

Demographic variables and basic conditions of refrigerators

The demographic variables involved in the questionnaire include the number of family members, highest education in the family, occupation, and annual family income of the respondents. The basic information for each refrigerator includes the purchasing channel, price, service life, total volume, power consumption, and energy-efficiency grade. The sample data are shown in

Table 2. Basic information on household refrigerators.

Factors		Frequency	Proportion
Annual family income (CNY)	Less than 80,000	58	17.26%
	80,000–150,000	106	31.55%
	150,000–400,000	139	41.37%
	400,000–800,000	29	8.63%
	More than 800,000	4	1.19%
Route of buying refrigerator	Online	106	31.55%
	Offline	230	68.45%
Refrigerator price (CNY)	More than 2000	24	7.14%
	2000–3000	90	26.79%
	3000–5000	108	32.14%
	5000–8000	71	21.13%
	8000–10,000	23	6.85%
	Less than 10,000	20	5.95%
Refrigerator age (year)	Less than 1	42	12.50%
	1–2	51	15.18%
	3–5	135	40.18%
	More than 5	108	32.14%
Refrigerator volume (liter)	Less than 200	61	18.15%
	200–300	117	34.82%
	300–400	30	8.93%
	400–500	46	13.69%
	500–600	52	15.48%
	More than 600	30	8.93%
Power consumption (kWh/24 h)	Less than 0.5	50	14.88%
	0.5–0.7	84	25.00%
	0.7–0.9	69	20.54%
	0.9–1.1	76	22.62%
	1.1–1.3	25	7.44%
	1.3–1.5	9	2.68%
	More than 1.5	23	6.84%
Energy-efficiency level	Grade 1	210	62.50%
	Grade 2	94	27.98%
	Grade 3	25	7.44%
	Grade 4	4	1.19%
	Grade 5	3	0.89%
Total		336	100%

.

In total, 80.05% of the respondents reported having 3–5 family members. The shares of respondents with annual family incomes of CNY 80,000–150,000 and CNY 150,000–400,000 (1 USD = CNY 6.36 on 16 January 2022), respectively, accounted for 31.55% and 41.37%. Most of the respondents’ family incomes correspond to a well-off or middle-class level, with comparatively high living standards [33]. Overall, 31.55% of respondents bought their refrigerators online, while 68.45% of respondents purchased their refrigerators offline. Refrigerators priced between CNY 3000 and CNY 5000 accounted for 32.14% of the total. The use time of refrigerators in most of the surveyed households was 3–5 years, accounting for 40.18%, and the total volume of refrigerators in 34.82% of households was 200–300 L, representing the largest proportion. In total, 62.5% of refrigerator energy-efficiency levels were Grade 1, while 27.68% were Grade 2.

The level of consumption is increasing, and large-volume, multi-functional, new-style refrigerators become more popular with an increase in family income, which prove that efficiency behaviors are positively correlated with household income [34]. In the context of the double-carbon policy, individuals’ low-carbon awareness has significantly risen under the continuous improvement of the national energy conservation policy and the promotion of low-carbon energy conservation ideas. Against this background, the demand for energy-saving performance of refrigerators has increased. The power consumption of refrigerators in the respondents’ families was mostly 0.5–1.1 kWh/24 h. In addition, Grade 1 refrigerators accounted for a high proportion, but there was still a certain number of refrigerators Grade 2 and above. This result indicates that the respondents’ demands for energy-saving performance are increasing as is their understanding and recognition of the relevant provisions for energy-efficiency grades issued by the National Energy Administration. In addition, the respondents with higher consumption and education levels reported that they would support greater national energy conservation and emission reduction policies, which was also proved by Wu and Zhang (2017), that is, energy-saving awareness gradually increases with increasing levels of educational attainment [35]. Overall, demand for the energy-saving performance of refrigerators continues to increase.

(2)

The influencing factors of purchasing refrigerators

Here, the principal factors influencing purchasing refrigerators among respondents are product brand, product price, energy-efficiency grade, and volume (

Table 3. Different ranking proportions for the same factor.

	First		Second		Third		Total
	Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage
Brand	232	85.61%	26	9.59%	13	4.80%	271
Price	35	18.42%	114	60.00%	41	21.58%	190
Energy-efficiency level	33	16.75%	87	44.16%	77	39.09%	197
Service life	11	19.30%	25	43.86%	21	36.84%	57
Volume	17	9.55%	58	32.58%	103	57.87%	178
Appearance	2	5.41%	7	18.92%	28	75.68%	37
After-sale service	5	11.63%	8	18.60%	30	69.77%	43
Promotion	0	0.00%	1	33.33%	2	66.67%	3

). The most important factor is the product brand with a frequency of 271. The second is the energy-efficiency grade with a total frequency of 197. The next is the product price with a frequency of 190. In addition to product brand, price, and volume, respondents also considered the energy-efficiency grade and energy conservation of the refrigerators. As shown in

Table 4. Proportion of different factors in the same ranking.

	Brand	Price	Energy-Efficiency Level	Service Life	Volume	Appearance	After-Sale Service	Promotion	Total
First	69.25%	10.45%	9.85%	3.28%	5.07%	0.60%	1.49%	0.00%	335
Second	7.98%	34.97%	26.69%	7.67%	17.79%	2.15%	2.45%	0.31%	326
Third	4.13%	13.02%	24.44%	6.67%	32.70%	8.89%	9.52%	0.63%	315

, most people prioritize brand factors when purchasing refrigerators. Most consumers who consider the third factor place refrigerator volume in third place.

The attitude to answering questions for respondents was quantified into five levels. The average score of each item here is distributed between 3.46 and 4.21, which indicates an overall high level. Among the items, the average score of “I will understand the energy-efficiency performance of products when I buy refrigerators.” is the highest (4.21), which indicates that consumers have high recognition of the national policy about energy-efficiency labels. Consumers pay attention to the energy-efficiency performance of products and choose products with better energy-efficiency performance and greater energy conservation. The average scores of “I will buy a refrigerator with a higher price but higher energy efficiency if I replace a refrigerator.” and “I will consider buying more expensive products with higher energy efficiency for environmental protection.” were found to be 3.93 and 3.79, respectively, indicating that most consumers are willing to buy more energy-saving products at a higher price. The average score of “I think high electricity prices are conducive to the purchasing and promotion of energy-saving refrigerators.” is 3.55, suggesting that the respondents basically agree that increasing electricity prices is conducive to the promotion of energy-saving refrigerators. The average score of “I am familiar with the national energy-efficiency-labeling policy and standards for household appliances.” is the lowest at 3.46. Based on these results, governments should encourage people to understand and implement the national policy more accurately and actively practice a low-carbon life.

3.2.2. Correlation Analysis

A correlation analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables using the Pearson correlation coefficient in SPSS 20 to judge whether the two factors were positively or negatively correlated between energy-efficiency cognition and trust ($x_1$), environmental awareness ($x_2$), economic motivation ($x_3$), electricity price incentive ($x_4$), and purchase intention ($y$) (

Table 5. Correlations between variables.

	$\mathit{y}$	${\mathit{x}}_1$	${\mathit{x}}_2$	${\mathit{x}}_3$	${\mathit{x}}_4$
$y$	1	0.640 **	0.653 **	0.655 **	0.318 **
$x_1$	0.640 **	1	0.636 **	0.694 **	0.408 **
$x_2$	0.653 **	0.636 **	1	0.753 **	0.401 **
$x_3$	0.655 **	0.694 **	0.753 **	1	0.421 **
$x_4$	0.318 **	0.408 **	0.401 **	0.421 **	1

Note: “**” means the significance level is 0.01.

). The results show that the correlations between any independent variables are significant and positive, and the correlations between purchase intention and any other factor are also positive.

3.2.3. Regression Analysis

The Cronbach’s α of the questionnaire is 0.911, indicating that the variables have good internal consistency. Deleting any item will not increase Cronbach’s α, demonstrating that all scales have good reliability and can be further analyzed. The results show that the variance inflation factor (VIF) of independent variables is less than 10; thus, regression analysis can be performed. As shown in

Table 6. Results of linear regression.

Variables	$\mathit{\beta }$	t	sig.	VIF
Energy-efficiency cognition and trust	0.297	5.449	0.000	2.465
Environmental awareness	0.294	4.964	0.000	2.572
Economic motivation	0.236	3.703	0.000	2.963
Electricity price incentive	−0.021	−0.487	0.627	1.305
Test of significance	F = 93.377 sig. = 0.000
Goodness of fit	R2 = 0.530, adjusted R2 = 0.524

, the adjusted R² of the model is 0.524, and the significance of the equation is less than 0.01. There is a strong linear relationship between consumers’ purchase intentions and energy-efficiency cognition and trust, environmental awareness, and economic motivation. More specifically, the intention of purchasing energy-saving refrigerators is significantly related to energy-efficiency cognition and trust ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.297, t = 5.449, sig. < 0.01) and environmental awareness ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.294, t = 4.964, sig. < 0.01), which suggests that improving the consciousness of energy efficiency and environmental protection can effectively promote the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators. This result is similar to that of Zainudin et al. (2014), and they found that energy labels have to be understood, trusted, and valued as a tool for consumers’ decision making [36]. It also proves that labeling the institutional mechanism positively influences consumers’ purchasing attitudes [37]. Additionally, economic motivation is related to purchase intention ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.236, t = 3.703, sig. < 0.01), which indicates that appropriate price reductions of products are conducive to the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators. However, purchase intention had a low response under the electricity price incentive (= −0.021, t = −0.487, sig. > 0.05); thus, high electricity prices cannot promote the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators.

3.2.4. Modeling and Analysis of BP Neural Network

After calculating the difference between the predicted value and the actual value of the respondents’ purchase intentions, the histogram was obtained (Figure 9). The average and standard deviation of error values are 0.14 and 0.81 respectively. The error between the actual value and the predicted value is normally distributed near zero, which indicates that the neural network model offers a good prediction effect.

According to the results of the BP neural network, there are differences in the importance of the five factors that affect consumers’ purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators (

Table 7. Contributions of different factors.

	Importance	Standardized Importance
Energy-efficiency label trust	0.212	73.6%
Energy efficiency concern	0.155	54.0%
Energy efficiency policy awareness	0.152	53.0%
Environmental awareness	0.193	67.3%
Economic motivation	0.287	100.0%

). The importance of economic motivation, energy-efficiency label trust, environmental awareness, energy-efficiency concern, and energy-efficiency policy awareness after standardization were found to be 100%, 73.6%, 67.3%, 54%, and 53%, respectively. Furthermore, economic motivation played a decisive role in consumers’ purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators, and reducing the price of energy-saving refrigerators was found to effectively promote the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators. In addition, environmental awareness was found to stimulate consumers to buy energy-saving refrigerators. From the perspective of energy efficiency, trust in the energy-efficiency label was the main factor impacting purchasing decisions. Therefore, popularizing the meaning of energy-efficiency labels would further facilitate the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators.

The default factor method was used for sensitivity analysis to identify the main factors affecting the purchase intention. By removing one factor at a time, we made the BP neural network model based on the four factors left. The four-factor model adopts the same training samples, testing samples, and algorithms as the five-factor model. As shown in Equations (2) and (3) [38], $Y_{RMSE}$ represents the root mean squared error. $Y_{RMSE\left(-i\right)}$ is the RMSE in the model when factor $i$ is removed. The larger the sensitivity index ($Y_i$), the more sensitive the purchase intention is to the factor.

$$Y_{RMSE}=\sqrt{\frac{{{\displaystyle \sum }}_{i=1}^n{\left(\widehat{y}\left(i\right)-y\left(i\right)\right)}^2}{n-1}}$$

(2)

$$Y_i=\frac{Y_{RMSE\left(-i\right)}}{Y_{RMSE}}$$

(3)

As

Table 8. Sensitivity analysis of purchase intention based on BP neural network model.

	${\mathit{Y}}_{\mathit{R}\mathit{M}\mathit{S}\mathit{E}}$	Sensitivity Index	Rank of Sensitive Factor
Full factors	0.8214
Energy-efficiency label trust	0.8639	1.0517409	2
Energy-efficiency concern	0.8322	1.0131483	4
Energy-efficiency policy awareness	0.9542	1.1616752	1
Environmental awareness	0.8499	1.0346969	3
Economic motivation	0.7861	0.9570246	5

shows, purchase intention is the most sensitive to energy-efficiency policy awareness, which means that increasing people’s attention to energy-efficiency policy effectively enables consumers to pay for energy-saving refrigerators. The sensitivity index of energy-efficiency label trust is the second largest. It reflects that confidence in the energy-efficiency label can greatly influence the purchase intention.

4. Conclusions and Future Works

The proposal of the double-carbon policy and the requirements of energy conservation make it of great practical value to expand the market share and promotion of energy-saving refrigerators. The present study used a data crawler, textual analysis, a questionnaire survey, regression analysis, and neural network modeling to explore the current situation and influencing factors underlying consumers’ purchasing intentions towards energy-saving refrigerators. The main conclusions are as follows.

(1)

From the demand side, consumers pay attention to the energy-efficiency grade to some extent when buying refrigerators, but refrigerators classified as Grade 2 and above still account for a certain proportion (37.5%). Brand, performance, and price are the main factors that consumers consider when buying refrigerators.

(2)

From the supply side, most refrigerator brands with top online sales focus on door styles and applicable types. Energy efficiency has also attracted the attention of Haier, Midea, and Melng. However, Panasonic and Siemens do not sufficiently publicize energy efficiency. About 55% of the refrigerators with top sales are Grade 1, with a large proportion being Grade 2 and above products.

(3)

Consumers’ energy-efficiency label trust, environmental awareness, and economic motivation have a significant impact on consumers’ willingness to buy energy-saving refrigerators, but increasing electricity prices cannot promote the purchasing of energy-saving refrigerators at present.

(4)

In the BP neural network prediction model, the importance of economic motivation after standardization was found to be the highest, which indicates that appropriately reducing the cost of energy services over the product’s lifecycle will help improve the acceptance of energy-saving refrigerators among consumers.

Considering the current promotion status of refrigerators and the influencing factors of purchasing, we propose the following policy options.

(1)

The government needs to further improve subsidy policy for the production and consumption of energy-saving refrigerators. Governments need to focus on subsidizing low- and middle-income families and reducing the economic burden of families buying energy-saving refrigerators. Moreover, it is necessary to improve the energy efficiency of small volume refrigerators. Brands with low market share should be supported to innovate for the purpose of manufacturing energy-saving refrigerators. Since the production of brands with high market share is large, the government should supervise refrigerators manufactured by those brands to guarantee the standardization of energy efficiency.

(2)

Refrigerator suppliers should increase the development and publicity of energy-saving refrigerators. Manufacturers should introduce energy efficiency with other aspects of performance, such as service life and volume, for the purpose of promoting multi-feature refrigerators. It is, moreover, vital to improve the energy efficiency of small volume refrigerators and reduce the cost of energy services over the product’s lifecycle to satisfy consumers. Refrigerator retailers need to strengthen their promotion of energy efficiency and actively guide consumers to focus on energy-saving refrigerators. The information on energy-efficiency labels need to be further explained in detail to improve the buyers’ trust and understanding.

(3)

It is necessary to improve consumers’ awareness of energy-efficiency labels, energy conservation, and energy-efficiency policies. Individuals should actively learn and understand energy-efficiency labels and grades and consider high energy efficiency as an important factor when purchasing refrigerators.

This study can be applied to the promotion of other energy-saving household appliances. However, the influencing factors and mechanisms are different among various household appliances. In the future, we can enrich the types of household appliances and conduct investigations on larger scales. The number and distribution of the questionnaires are limited in this study. More samples can be further considered and conducted in potential consumer-gathering places, such as urban and rural home appliance stores.