The global south: New estimates and insights from urban India

Abstract

With increasing knowledge through empirical investigations, we now realize it is difficult to support a blanket statement that ‘rebound effect’ is high and will take back ‘all’ the energy savings benefits of efficiency improvements in countries of the Global South like India. In this article we review past literature, and report some new evidence of rebound effect estimates with insights that we draw from primary data collected on selected mobility service categories in India. The purpose of this article is to flag certain important observations that need further attention in the rebound discourse, which, we believe, promise to advance the subject both theoretically as well as for policy guidance in particular in the transport sector. The observed small proportion of super conservation behaviour and moderate partial rebound behaviour in mobility service can be scaled up by appropriate incentives going beyond price mechanisms and communication strategies. For example, improvement in promotional materials, comfort level of public transport systems, infrastructure to reduce congestion, and congestion management strategies can all remove behaviourial barriers to realise full potential of technical efficiency improvement.