Domestic energy conservation behaviour and attitudes

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Basic and strategic applied research

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Sociology)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Psychology)

Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Consumer attitudes and behaviour)

Mr ID Griffiths
University of Surrey

Standard

ESRC

01 October 1984

31 March 1986

18 months

£17,680

No relevance to Underpinning Sectors

South East

ESRC Energy

Mr ID Griffiths, University of Surrey

Objectives not supplied

In private households most purchased energy is used for space heating. Differences between similar households and dwellings in total consumption range up to 3:1. Predicting fuel consumption and the effects of energy conservation practices has had only limited success. This is particularly true for attitudinal research. A fresh approach to these problems rests on the hypothesis that fuel primarilyserves to maintain an indoor climate providing thermal comfort (to a considerable degree of accuracy it is possible to specify optimal conditions by application of the psycho-physiological theory of thermal comfort). Research attention has also perhaps been focused to an undue degree on the adoption of physical conservation measures (eg roof insulation) and on the costs of a broad set of household behaviours (eg opening windows while heating). The prime aim of the present research is to integrate social psychological approaches which seek to predict energy behaviour from attitudes with thermal comfort theory. It explores the degree to which comfort requirements determine behaviour and finally fuel consumption. The role and importance of attitudes to energy conservation are investigatedinrelation to comfort requirements. A second aim is concerned with the ways in which the physical characteristics of houses and heating systems interact with their occupants characteristics to produce different patterns of energy consumption. For example, do households living in well-insulated accommodation balance out potential savings by maintaining higher temperatures? The research makes useof data which were collected for the SE Gas Region in order to identify indicators of change in gas consumption. That provided a large data set based on face-to-face interviews, self-completion questionnaires and physical surveys. A sample of 150 households has been monitored over two heating seasons and is accompanied by a larger sample in order to check for the representativeness of themore detailed data collected in the panel study.

02/11/09