How limitations in energy access, poverty, and socioeconomic disparities compromise health interventions for outbreaks in urban settings.

Low-income households (LIHs) have experienced increased poverty and inaccess to healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting their ability to adhere to health-protective behaviors. We use an epidemiological model to show how a households' inability to adopt social distancing, owing to constraints in utility and healthcare expenditure, can drastically impact the course of disease outbreaks in five urban U.S. counties. LIHs suffer greater burdens of disease and death than higher income households, while functioning as a consistent source of virus exposure for the entire community due to socioeconomic barriers to following public health guidelines. These impacts worsened when social distancing policy could not be imposed. Health interventions combining social distancing and LIH resource protection strategies (e.g., utility and healthcare access) were the most effective in limiting virus spread for all income levels. Policies need to address the multidimensionality of energy, housing, and healthcare access for future disaster management.

Beyond technology adoption: Examining home energy management systems, energy burdens and climate change perceptions during COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly changed our lives. While the global impacts of the pandemic are shocking, the implications for energy burdens, climate policy, and energy efficiency are salient. This study examines income differences in the acceptance of and willingness to pay for home energy management systems during the COVID-19 pandemic among 632 residents in New York. Additionally, this study examines energy profiles, energy burdens, climate change issues, risk perceptions, and social-psychological factors. Compared with low-income households, our findings suggest that high-income households use more energy, have higher utility bills during quarantine mandates, perceive a higher risk of COVID-19 infection, and perceive climate change issues to be better than before. Low-income households, however, experience the highest energy burdens. Regarding HEMS acceptance, high-income households are more willing to adopt energy and well-being-promoting features of HEMS and more willing to pay a higher monthly fee for all the features than other income groups. Overall, participants were more willing to pay a higher price for the energy features than the well-being-promoting features. Low-income households indicate lower social norms, personal norms, and perceived behavioral control over adopting HEMS; they also perceive HEMS to be more difficult to use and less useful. Higher-income households express a higher trust in utilities than low-income households. Surprisingly, cost concerns, technology anxiety, and cybersecurity concerns relating to HEMS do not differ across income groups. This paper addresses the interactions among technology attributes and social-psychological and demographic factors, and provides policy implications and insights for future research.