  Twelve years ago, the European Union began with the gradual phase-out of
energy-inefficient incandescent light bulbs under the Ecodesign Directive. In
this work, we implement an agent-based simulation to model the consumer
behaviour in the EU lighting market with the goal to explain consumer behaviour
and explore alternative policies. Agents are based on the Consumat II model,
have individual preferences based on empirical market research, gather
experience from past actions, and socially interact with each other in a
dynamic environment. Our findings suggest that the adoption of energy-friendly
lighting alternatives was hindered by a low level of consumer interest combined
with high-enough levels of satisfaction about incandescent bulbs and that
information campaigns can partially address this. These findings offer insight
into both individual-level driving forces of behaviour and society-level
outcomes in a niche market. With this, our work demonstrates the strengths of
agent-based models for policy generation and evaluation.
