Even if capital costs weren't a factor, space heaters make a lot of sense in very common situations involving heating a particular area. It doesn't matter if heat pumps are 3-4x more efficient if one has to heat up 6x-8x the area instead of a small room that's currently being occupied (i.e. a home office).
Yup, very true. Something else I thought of is that if you are a landlord paying the capital costs, but your tenant pays the electricity bill, then you're incentivized to pick the cheapest heating system, not the most efficient one. This factor probably makes resistive heating more widespread than it should be.
