Demand management strategies needed for home electricity use
Changing the way we use electricity at home can make a big impact on the size of the bill at the end of the month. Dr Jodie Kleinschafer looks at how households make energy efficiency choices and what motivates those choices.
Because there is an increasing demand for electricity, and increasing environmental concerns about how it is generated, distributed and used, there is a need to develop more effective demand management strategies that increase the efficiency of residential electricity consumption.
However, attempts to manage household electricity demand or increase efficiency have had only limited success so far, and there has been limited investigation into how households make energy efficiency choices, and what motivates those choices.
My research firstly examined previous studies of efficiency and household decision making. Then I conducted nine focus groups and a survey of 4000 households in regional NSW to reveal how households make the decision to become more efficient. I looked at two types of efficiency: investment (making a purchase such as more efficient appliances or insulation, etc) and curtailment (efficiency based on behaviour change).
Most of the existing research literature had explored how investment decisions were made within households, such as the purchase of single big-ticket items, like cars, refrigerators and washing machines. But there was little attempt to explain how households made curtailment decisions about incremental small-cost efficiency gains and savings, which most occupants contribute to with the flick of a switch many times a day.
Surprisingly, I found that 41 percent of households have not recognised the need to increase their energy efficiency. This seemed high given the wide publicity in recent years about the need for efficiency.
Further, I found that many of those households that endorse being more efficient have not actually acted on this need. Rather, it was those households which had gone the extra step and had searched for information that were more likely to have engaged in efficiency behaviours in the past, and were more interested in participating in future efficiency programs. This suggested that moving people on from merely recognising the need to actually investing time in searching for information about how to do it is important in campaigns trying to stimulate efficiency.
I also found that people are more inclined to search for information if they feel price sensitive. This finding suggests that current increases in electricity prices will lead consumers to seek more information about how to increase their efficiency. This presents a great opportunity to inform households about efficiency, and to influence the types of efficiency they choose.
My examination of the interactions between household members found that when everyone in a household is involved in the decision making and cooperates, greater efficiency is achieved in both investments and curtailments. Because everyone in the household contributes to electricity consumption, it is important for all household members to commit to efficiency strategies.
Finally, I found that norms of behaviour (implicit rules upheld by the household) are often used in households as a mechanism to establish and maintain appropriate electricity use behaviours. The use of norms in households was important as it was linked to the number of efficiency behaviours (both investment and curtailment) that households had employed in the past. I also found that these behaviours were maintained in the long-term. These findings suggest that norms of behaviour are a useful mechanism for changing behaviour, they are predictive of efficiency behaviour, and they can lead to long-term behaviour change.
Dr Jodie Kleinschafer has been working at Charles Sturt University 2004. During that time she has taught a variety of marketing subjects including Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Principles, International Marketing, Market Research and Market Analysis. In a research capacity, Jodie has been involved in numerous research projects including investigations into household decision making, electricity efficiency and regional art gallery membership, the role of psychological contracts in the work place and DBA programs. Her PhD was based in the area of consumer behaviour, and was a large scale investigation into household electricity efficiency and the way households make choices to alter their electricity consumption. On the basis of this research she was presented with an Award for Research Excellence by the Institute of Land Water and Society (ILWS) in 2010.
foggy
April 6, 2012 at 5:06 pm
The right choice?
Information exhaustion. Now I feel it is choice exhaustion. There is solar and wind energy. I had put my feelers out long time back, but instead of making a single choice, keywords like co-generation and hybrid are making me think of choice combination. Especially when there is plenty of both sun and wind available in one ‘s backyard. You are mentally engaged in calculating, that when the wind energy will be running your A/C and fridge, what fort shall solar energy be holding regarding the rest of the household appliances? Also the trickle charge for your automobile battery,and both solar and direct heat solar panel for the water heater;ideal for saving on energy. Then the irresistible small panels to charge all your small devices, till life seems nothing but hanging back packs on trees;T-shirts, jackets(all solar panelled)with clothes s grips. And solar cells spray painted on several panes all around in your backyard.Or on top of your kennel. Makes your backyard as good as camping outdoors. Which just leaves us with one important option -Which choice is more suitable for efficiency.