Forecasting the Success of Governmental "Incentivized" Initiatives: Case Study of a New Policy Promoting the Replacement of Old Household; Air-conditioners

• Published in: Journal of knowledge management, economics and information technology Vol. 2; no. 1
• Main Authors: PETROPOULOS, Fotios, NIKOLOPOULOS, Konstantinos, Akrivi, LITSA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: ScientificPapers.org 2012
• Series: Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology
• Subjects: Government; Group forecasting; Incentives; Policy Implementation; Structured Analogies; Subsidies
• ISSN: 2069-5934

Governments often use budget so as to provide incentives for citizens to adopt new policies, especially when these are promoting eco-friendly technologies e.g. to subsidise the price of a hybrid-car. The public money spent on each policy, is considered to be value-for–money only if many citizens do adopt the proposed policy. This is also known as the ‘cost-effectiveness’ or the ‘economic success’ of a new policy. The latter should not be confused with the ‘economic impact’ of the new policy, as this is usually referred to the respective macro/micro socio-economic impact. This study reports on a experiment with semi-experts using Structured Analogies (SA) forecasting the success of a new policy promoting replacing old household air conditioners with energy saving units under a new environment and technology initiative implemented by a European government. The findings shows evidence that Structured Analogies (SA) is a useful forecasting tool for policy making, however all methods predicted results that were considerably off the mark, indicating the difficulty of the forecasting task under examination.