This paper reports on an Agent-Based Model. The purpose of developing this model is to describe 'the uptake of low carbon and energy e icient technologies and practices by households and under di erent interventions'. There is a particular focus on modelling non-financial incentives as well as the influence of social networks as well as the decision making by multiple types of agents in interaction, i.e. recommending agents and sales agents, not just households. The decision making model for householder agents is inspired by the Consumat approach, as well as some of those recently applied to electric vehicles. A feature that di erentiates this model is that it also represents information agents that provide recommendations and sales agents that proactively sell energy e icient products. By applying the model to a number of scenarios with policies aimed at increasing the adoption of solar hot water systems, a range of questions are explored, including whether it is more e ective to incentivise sales agents to promote solar hot water systems, or whether it is more e ective to provide a subsidy directly to households; or in fact whether it is better to work with plumbers so that they can promote these systems. The resultant model should be viewed as a conceptual structure with a theoretical and empirical grounding, but which requires further data collection for rigorous analysis of policy options.
Thrift used to mean necessary scrimping and saving in order to get by. But more recently, with growing prosperity coupled with a heightened sense of global social and environmental fragility, the meaning of thrift has shifted in advanced economies connecting with various practices geared towards reconfigured modes of consumption and lifestyles – ethical, conscientious or collaborative. Many scholars and commentators have noted this shift and at least as many explanations have been proposed. This provides us with an opportunity to develop a more general theory of thrift by proposing that all thrift behaviours and practices can be understood over three basic dimensions that we identify as: (1) ‘causes of thrift’; (2) ‘meaning of thrift’; and (3) ‘thrift capital/capabilities’. We show how existing but disparate definitions and empirical studies of thrift can be organized with respect to this framework and how this enables us to elucidate the nature of the shift that is currently occurring.
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