Utilizing a Social-Ecological Framework to Promote Water and Energy Conservation: A Field Experiment1

Abstract

The present study utilized a social‐ecological framework to design an intervention to reduce residential water and energy use in a local community. An experimental design was used to study the influence of information leaflets, attunement labels, and socially comparative feedback on the actual levels of energy and water consumption in 166 households over a 6‐month period. The results suggest that the labels, designed to attune residents to the environmental‐impact affordances of various appliances around their homes, led to a 23% reduction in water consumption. Neither information leaflets nor socially comparative feedback produced significant reductions in water use, compared to controls. No significant reductions in energy consumption were observed for any of the intervention conditions. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications and their application to public policy promoting environmentally sustainable behavior.

Retrofitting social housing in the UK: Home energy use and performance in a pre-Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP)

“…Prompts prove effective in reminding people with repetitive behaviours that they may have the potential and ability to change their lifestyles to become more environmentally sustain-able. In fact, several studies have proven that prompts targeting specific behaviours have actually had a significant impact on promoting sustainable behaviour [8,60,61]. In a scheme such as the CESP, where houses are approached within the same neighbour-hood, activating the social norms among households by providing information and feedback, comparing between their energy performances, and awarding those who achieve the lowest levels of energy consumption could, in effect, improve the outcomes of such a scheme.…”

Personalized Normative Feedback and the Moderating Role of Personal Norms

“…Price incentives (or disincentives) may be more successful, but even the effectiveness of increasing rates to encourage conservation has had limited success (Espey, Espey, & Shaw, 1997;Michelson, McGuckin, & Stumpf, 1999;Slavin, Wodanski, & Blackburn, 1981). Prompts have been shown to be effective for some behaviors, and are especially beneficial for fostering simple and repetitive behaviors (Kurz, Donaghue, & Walker, 2005;Werner, Stoll, Birch, & White, 2002), but they are generally not effective at encouraging new behaviors.…”

Stasis and change: social psychological insights into social-ecological resilience

“…This gives rise to the second principle of attunements, which represents the fact that individuals can be attuned to different affordances, with those affordances that are more meaningful to the moment potentially being more salient than less meaningful ones. For example, when perceiving and interacting with objects that are environmentally relevant, it has been said that the primary, instrumental affordances, e.g., cleanliness, or transportation, are usually the most salient, whereas environmental-impact affordances are typically not perceived (Hormuth 1999, Kurz et al 2005. This idea resonates with sociological research on the social and cultural conventions for comfort, cleanliness, and convenience associated with everyday energy-consuming, social practices (Shove 2003a).…”

“…Rather, social behavior often operates implicitly, only accessible via indirect means. Thus, it is possible that affordances can be studied more validly in controlled experiments in which the environment is systematically changed to prime or cue the affordance, e.g., by way of labels that attune people to alternative affordances, and subsequent action is objectively measured, as has been shown in the area of household energy and water conservation (Kurz et al 2005).…”

“…A social-ecological framework of attitude and behavior changes outlines three key principles of how individuals perceive and interact with their environment: affordances, attunements, and effectivities (Baron and Misovich 1993, Kurz 2002, Kurz et al 2005. The overarching principle of affordances, developed by Gibson (1979) in relation to visual perception, represents the idea that objects and/or features in the environment are perceived by a person in terms of the object's functional significance or utility, e.g., a hot shower affords warmth, cleanliness, and comfort.…”