Exploring household natural gas consumption patterns and their influencing factors: An integrated clustering and econometric method

Understanding household natural gas consumption patterns and their influencing factors can help implement specific energy consumption policies and improve energy efficiency. Based on a dataset of natural gas consumption bills for 3995 households in Hefei city, China, this study identifies different household gas consumption patterns using intelligent cluster analysis, taking into account the increasing block tariffs (IBTs) and temperature factors. Subsequently, the survey data of 348 households are matched with the billing and weather data to explore the key drivers of natural gas consumption patterns in different households. The results show that (1) household gas consumption patterns can be divided into four types: a single-point spike, double-point flat-peak, micro-peak, and linear. Among them, single-point spike type consumers and double-point flat-peak type consumers belong to the second and third levels of consumers with high gas consumption, and consumers using wall-hung boilers account for a high proportion of households. (2) For the whole sample, both the IBT policy and the temperature have a significant negative impact on household gas consumption. In terms of different types of consumers, micro-peak and linear consumers are more sensitive to the IBT policy, whereas temperature has the greatest impact on the gas consumption of single-point peak consumers.