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Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
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INTRODUCTION
At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, in 1980
the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences
established the Committee on the Behavioral and Social
Aspects of Energy Consumption and Production to undertake
a broad review of literature in the behavioral and social
sciences with potential relevance to understanding energy
consumption and production in the United States. The
committee was formed with the recognition that the basis
for analysis of policies concerning energy production and
consumption has consisted of economic paradigms as well
as assessments of the potential contributions and
environmental impacts of new and existing technologies.
It was also recognized, however, that noneconomic factors
had been given insufficient attention by energy policy
makers. There was great concern, for example, about the
possibility that the hostilities that broke out on
gasoline lines during the 1979 oil shortfall were only a
pale image of what would happen in a serious oil
emergency. It was anticipated that the noneconomic
behavioral and social sciences might make important
contributions to energy policy and analysis in at least
four ways:
First, they might help increase the accuracy of
predictions of behavioral responses to economic incentives
affecting energy use. For example, analysis of social,
psychological, and organizational factors mediating energy
use might aid understanding of why economic incentives
have not always bad the anticipated effects on the
behavior of individuals and firms. Research in the
noneconomic social sciences might also illuminate the
processes of formation and change of consumer preferences,
usually treated as exogenous in economic models.
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Second, an understanding of noneconomic social forces
might increase our knowledge of ways to influence energy
use independent of economic incentives. For example,
behavior has often followed changes in social norms, such
as those encoded in civil rights laws. And behavioral
changes sometimes occur without either legal sanctions or
economic incentives. For example, much research in
social psychology has shown that when compliance is
induced with minimum pressure, the resulting changes in
behavior can be far stronger than those generated by
applying strong sanctions. Such processes of social
influence may be applicable to energy consumption.
Third, the noneconomic behavioral and social sciences
might improve the capacity of the public to make choices
about energy technologies. Knowledge developed by
psychologists, sociologists, and other researchers
concerned with organizational behavior might be useful
for improving communication systems, understanding the
basis of public perceptions of risk from energy
technologies, and understanding the responses of
producers to changing consumer preferences.
Fourth, the ultimate consequences of energy policies
are mediated by behavioral and social processes. Energy
policies may, for example, influence interregional
migration, create needs for new types of skills and
training among the work force, and alter housing and
transportation patterns.
Such changes in major social
systems and processes may potentiate or undermine the
intended effects of policies, or they may produce
important secondary, unintended effects.
Despite the significance of these potential
contributions, the noneconomic behavioral and social
sciences have been concerned with energy issues for only
a short time. As a result their contributions to
knowledge about national energy issues can at present
only occasionally take the form of propositions derived
from the empirical study of energy issues. More often
the contributions will be of other kinds. Basic
knowledge developed through the study of behavioral and
social processes may suggest opportunities or problems
that might otherwise be overlooked by energy policy
makers. Such knowledge may suggest ideas that could be
applied in implementing policy or developing new policy
initiatives. It may suggest ways to acquire knowledge
that might reduce the likelihood of major policy
mistakes. It may complement existing models of analysis
and thus increase the understanding of policy makers
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concerning the energy system they attempt to predict or
influence.
With these opportunities and limitations in mind, the
committee developed the following strategy: We would
first identify areas in which knowledge developed in the
behavioral and social sciences might be relevant to the
energy policy concerns that prompted establishment of the
committee. We would then select a subset of topics for
more detailed analysis in the second year. Because it
became obvious early in our deliberations that an analysis
of the behavior of energy consumers would become one of
these topics, work began on that subject fairly early in
the first year.
In the work on the behavior of energy consumers, the
committee quickly encountered an important issue that has
not yet been completely resolved: the problem of communi-
cating insights developed in noneconomic disciplines to
those readers, including many policy makers, who think in
economic terms. It was the perceived need of policy
makers for access to these insights that led to the
creation of the committee, so the communication issue is
critical. We have been considering two general
approaches.
The first is to attempt to translate the committee's
insights into language that may be understood without
great difficulty within the dominant neoclassical economic
paradigm. For example, we might discuss information about
energy and energy costs in terms of its properties as a
signal of changing economic events or in terms of the ways
consumers process incomplete or uncertain information.
This sort of approach would make some insights from the
noneconomic behavioral and social sciences easily
accessible to policy makers and others not trained in
these disciplines. Such a translation might therefore
increase the immediate usefulness to the policy community
of any insights the committee might produce. A major
risk of this approach is that insights that are not
readily translatable may be given insufficient attention.
The other approach is to present the committee's
insights in relatively jargon-free English, without
making any specific accommodation to economic paradigms.
This approach would make it easier to determine the
weight to give to the various insights, uninfluenced by
the process of translation. For example, it is
relatively easy to discuss, in a manner comprehensible to
people trained in economics, recent behavioral research
on the judgment and action of individuals faced with
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information that is uncertain, incomplete, or available
only at a high cost of money or effort. It is more
difficult to discuss in similar terms the research
relevant to consumer responses when information is
conflicting or seen as untrustworthy. Because of the
problem of translation, an attempt to discuss noneconomic
views of information in economic terms might produce a
mistaken overemphasis on the issues of uncertain and
incomplete information and an underemphasis on problems
of conflicting and mistrusted information. The committee
may therefore be able to express its analyses more
accurately in discipline-neutral, ordinary English.
There are risks to this approach as well. Readers
unfamiliar with the noneconomic disciplines may use the
committee's contributions selectively, making sense of
what easily translates into familiar terms, and passing
over other points. Worse, some readers may translate the
committee's language into familiar terms inaccurately,
distorting the concepts and misunderstanding the
committee's intentions.
Discussion among committee members continues over the
most effective language to use in conveying our contribu-
tions. This discussion will probably continue until the
final report is complete, and the solutions eventually
reached may not be entirely consistent with either of the
general approaches mentioned here. That is, we may choose
to relate our analyses to economic concepts in some places
and not in others. At the present state of its work, the
committee does not accept the notion that translation into
economic language is the appropriate general strategy.
There is too much concern that such translation would
dilute or distort important points that we plan to
emphasize. In this report, when it has been possible to
anticipate that the lack of translation might cause
confusion or misunderstanding, we have tried to be
particularly clear about the way we are using terms.
The remainder of this report is divided into two
sections and an appendix. The first section describes
possible areas of contribution from the social and
behavioral sciences and the three topics chosen for
further study: the behavior of energy consumers, energy
activity at the local level, and preparation for and
response to energy emergencies. The second section
presents the committee's first-year work on one of these
topics, the behavior of energy consumers. The appendix
is a paper by committee member Robert Axelrod that forms
part of the basis for the committee's work on another of
these topics, energy emergencies.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
economic incentives
