OPUS “Socio-economic, environmental
and technical determinants of energy poverty in rural areas in Poland”

Project manager: dr hab. inż. Arkadiusz Piwowar

The main objective of the research is to characterize the processes and phenomena related to the energy poverty in rural areas in Poland, with a particular emphasis put on farmers’ households. The problem of energy poverty in the context of agriculture (relations: farmer’s household – agricultural holding) has not been the subject of scientific interest so far, but is an important element of improvement of the quality of life of rural residents. The existing studies in Poland, prepared mostly by independent research institutes, concern mainly the scale of the problem. The findings obtained in this project, especially at the microeconomic level, will bring new values to the theory of economics in the area of economic functions of a household (production and consumption functions).
Under the project, it is planned to conduct three-stage empirical research based on the author’s survey questionnaires:

1) quantitative surveys of farmer’s households (size of the test sample – 480 farmers’ households, surveys representative in the scale of Poland);

2) qualitative research (size of the test sample – 60 farmers’ households, surveys among the holdings from the first stage);

3) qualitative expert’s studies (size of the test sample size – 30 people).

The scope of the planned research will enable a comparable analysis in different contexts, which may be valuable for a better understanding of the methods of resource management in farmers’ households in Poland. This in turn may contribute to increasing the knowledge about the energy poverty, in particular about the specific character of this phenomenon in rural areas, in their entire economic, social and natural complexity.

Funding organization:
National Science Center

Programme:
OPUS 16

Project duration:
05/07/2019 – 04/07/2024

Funding amount:
370 004 PLN

Project status:
Project in progress