How do socio-demographic and psychological factors relate to households’ direct and indirect energy use and savings?

Abstract

a b s t r a c tHouseholds constitute an important target group for energy conservation. They not only use energy in a direct way (gas, electricity and fuel) but also in an indirect way (embedded in the production, consumption and disposal of goods). During a period of five months (viz., October 2002-March 2003, direct and indirect energy use and direct and indirect energy savings of 189 Dutch households were monitored. The study examined the relative importance of socio-demographic variables and psychological variables in relation to household energy use and changes in energy use (viz., energy savings). For this purpose, variables from the theory of planned behavior [Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211] and the norm activation model [Schwartz, S. H. (1977). Normative influences on altruism. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.). Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 221-279). New York: Academic Press] were used. Results indicate that energy use is determined by socio-demographic variables, whereas changes in energy use, which may require some form of (cognitive) effort, appear to be related to psychological variables. The variables from the norm activation model were able to significantly add to the explanation of energy savings, over and above the variables from the theory of planned behavior. Also, different types of energy use and energy savings appeared to be related to different sets of determinants.

Disentangling household and individual actors in explaining private electricity consumption

“…At the household level, some authors differentiate direct (the in-house use of electricity or fuels) and indirect energy consumption, incurred by the production, transportation and disposal of consumer goods (Abrahamse & Steg, 2009;Benders et al 2006Gatersleben et al, 2002Poortinga et al, 2004). Furthermore, energy consumption refers to the absolute amount of energy used (e.g.…”

“…Furthermore, energy consumption refers to the absolute amount of energy used (e.g. Abrahamse & Steg, 2009), while energy saving refers to a relative change compared to a benchmark or a control group (e.g. Benders et al, 2006;Gatersleben et al, 2002;Poortinga et al, 2004).…”

“…Household characteristics The most prominent (and also most obvious) driving factor of household energy consumption is household size: Larger households consume more energy (Abrahamse & Steg, 2009;Bartiaux, 2008;Gatersleben et al, 2002;Newton & Meyer, 2012;Poortinga et al, 2004;Statistics 2011). The role of household income is more ambiguous: Some authors find that more income leads to higher direct (Bartiaux, 2008) or overall energy consumption (Gatersleben et al, 2002;Poortinga et al, 2004).…”

“…Furthermore, high-income households have a higher share of indirect energy consumption due to more purchased goods (Cohen et al 2005). In contrast, others find no or only a weak effect on energy consumption (Abrahamse & Steg, 2009;Newton & Meyer, 2012) and electricity consumption (Sanquist et al, 2012;Thøgersen & Grønhøj, 2010;Wiesmann et al 2011), once other factors like household size and structure, dwelling type, floor area or appliance stock and use are controlled for.…”

“…Many studies differentiate insufficiently between these distinct actor levels and employ for instance individual environmental attitudes to explain the level of household electricity consumption. Hence, they compound household and individual characteristics to explain consumption at the individual or household level (Abrahamse & Steg, 2009;Gatersleben et al 2002;Newton & Meyer, 2012;Poortinga et al 2004;Whitmarsh, 2009). This approach is oversimplifying because the household's electricity consumption is the outcome of all household members' (potentially even conflicting) activities, whereas the characteristics of one respondent can no more than approximate the characteristics of all household members (Longhi, 2013;Grønhøj & Ölander, 2007;Grønhøj & Thøgersen, 2009;Thøgersen & Grønhøj, 2010).…”