From a Techno-Economic towards a Socio-Technical Approach—A Review of the Influences and Policies on Home Energy Renovations’ Decisions

Abstract

Over the past decades, the debate on how to encourage energy efficiency in existing homes has been guided by a technic-economic model that has a strong focus on technologies and cost savings, in which human behavior has been devalued to a narrow behavioral economics overview. While this specific area of behavioral science enabled to capture of the dimension of energy renovations as a problem of homeowners’ individual choice, the collective and social aspects of energy efficiency are still largely overlooked on the energy policy agenda. With its emphasis on how social structures interpenetrate individual actions, social sciences offer additional insights that go beyond the identification of barrier-drivers underlying investment choices and also help to identify positive opportunities for renovation within the conditions of domestic and social life. Until recently, comprehensive behavioral aspects and the social dimension of home energy renovation have been ignored in policy initiatives, and the integration of complementary disciplines is only in its early stages. Based on a broad literature review, this paper aims to provide an up-to-date interdisciplinary perspective of the theoretical evolutionary background, which has been the support to gradually redefine and address the problems associated with energy improvements in homes.