Identifying Household Residential Electricity Un-subscribers under Two Electricity Subsidy Regimes in Indonesia <Article>

The use of electricity without a contract with a utility company is a form of electricity theft in Indonesia. The problem of illegal connection to the grid is neither widely acknowledged nor is discussed in detail in the recent literature. To enable deep discussions regarding issues of electricity fraud in Indonesia, this study aims to firstly identify the electricity un-subscribers, and then classify the un-subscribers by different tariff blocks based on the SUSENAS survey data. By comparing the unsubscriber structure over two electricity subsidy regimes, the results suggest that although with a regressive trend, the unsubscribers still make up a dominant proportion to the total electrified households. Furthermore, evidence from the classification of un-subscribers by tariff block tells that despite the number of the un-subscribers largely shrank among the low tariff blocks, it surged among the high tariff blocks. In summary, being able to identify the un-subscribers and classify them by tariff block paves the foundation for more in-depth studies on social and economic impacts of the un-subscribers in the future.