With increasing temperatures caused by climate change, air conditioning is becoming a necessity for people’s comfort and health. A new study provides insight into consumers’ interest in home cooling by analyzing social media data, and addresses data gaps in demographic heterogeneity of global air conditioner adoption.

Air conditioning (AC) poses a challenge for both climate mitigation and climate adaptation: AC units require a lot of energy to run, and much of this energy comes from burning fossil fuels, contributing to climate change. However, as many countries are experiencing longer and more intense heatwaves, the need for AC is growing fast. Understanding the extent and drivers of AC adoption is important for projecting future cooling energy demand and heat vulnerability, yet the available data is limited to household surveys from only a few countries.  

A new IIASA study demonstrates that social media data can complement conventional data in terms of geographic, temporal, and contextual scope as a low-cost data source. Covering billions of users and collected by the same algorithms, social media data is consistent across countries, and provides large-scale information that cannot be obtained from surveys with inevitably limited sample size.

The study analyzed Facebook and Instagram data, focusing on the users’ online interest in air conditioning. The results show that social media data may represent the trends in AC purchases. Another key finding is that – at a global level – middle aged, highly educated, married, or cohabiting males, as well as parents of small children, tend to express more online interest in AC. Countries that are increasingly vulnerable to rising temperatures and heatwaves, such as the Balkans and Middle East, show the highest online interest in AC. In those countries, population groups that have been known to be reluctant to adopt to AC, such as the elderly, show a relatively high online interest in AC, so their attitude might be changing.

“Online interest in AC, and ultimately AC adoption, is dependent on sociodemographic factors, beyond macroeconomic and climatic factors,” notes Sibel Eker, a researcher in the Sustainable Service Systems Research Group and the lead author of the study. “By showing the extent of AC interest across the world and population groups, there is a much better understanding of how climate change adaptation measures might be adopted on a global scale, and in which countries and groups they might need to be promoted.”

Reference

Eker, S., Mastrucci A., Pachauri S., van Ruijven B. (2023) Social media data sheds light on air-conditioning interest of heat-vulnerable regions and sociodemographic groups. One Earth DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2023.03.011

News

Satellite image of crops and fields

21 September 2023

Using satellite data to enhance global food security

Accurate estimates and forecasts of crop area and yield play an important role in guiding policy decisions related to food security, especially in light of the growing impacts of climate change. IIASA researchers and colleagues highlight the value of integrating remote sensing and data sharing for timely agricultural information critical for food security and sustainability planning in a new paper.    
Plastic pollution on a beach with sea in background

19 September 2023

Turning the tide: Ghana's innovative approach to tackle marine plastic pollution with citizen science

Working with IIASA researchers, Ghana has adopted a citizen science approach to addressing the problem of plastic pollution in marine environments, becoming the first country to integrate this type of data on marine plastic litter into its official monitoring and reporting processes. A new study presents this innovative approach on Ghana’s citizen science journey and offers a pathway that can potentially be adopted in other countries.
flagship report banner

13 September 2023

IIASA Flagship Report: Illuminating the path to sustainable wellbeing

IIASA is proud to announce the launch of its Flagship Report, "Systems Analysis for Sustainable Wellbeing. 50 Years of IIASA Research, 40 Years After the Brundtland Commission, Contributing to the Post-2030 Global Agenda” on Wednesday, 13 September 2023 at an official UN event in the framework of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly and the Sustainable Development Goals mid-term review.