Conclusion
Discussion and implication
Globally, the retail electricity industry has been gradually experiencing deregulation and liberalization drive for the last two decades. Recently, complete liberalization of entry into the retail electricity business and retail electricity rates were approved in Japan in order to create workable competition. In particular, this reform in the electric power industry was intended to bring vitality to the competition in the retail sector, and accelerate the spread of clean technologies for renewable energy and the microgeneration. As a result, this policy promoted competition and create value-added innovative services in the retail sector. In the wake of these changes, the Korean market is also outlining the terms and conditions for the new electric power services. Considering this situation, an accurate understanding of customers’ needs and preferences is required to provide service packages that could satisfy customers. Therefore, this paper explored future residential electric power services from consumers’ perspective, which directed towards the key attributes mentioned in the context of deregulation, liberalization, and green electricity. Specifically, we quantitatively estimated the consumers’ preference structure and their willingness to pay for key factors of electric power services by applying a choice experiment based on a conjoint survey. According to the results, electricity bills and the progressive electricity billing system were the two most important factors that influence decision making among consumers. Given that the progressive electricity billing system was one of the typical examples showing that government regulated electricity tariffs, the Korean government’s decision to lower households burden of high electricity bills, could be stated as the first step towards deregulating the electric power service market.
