Behavioral and Social Aspects of Energy Consumption and Production Preliminary Report (1982) / Chapter Skim
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Energy Consumers and their Environment
Energy Consumers and their Environment
Pages 17-50
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From page 17... ...
Another reason tor examining the national energy system is the recent change in national energy policy. 2The energy system may have served us well by preventing some past events from precipitating emergencies, but the emergencies now being contemplated are created by larger or more prolonged events.
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From page 18... ...
The underlying assumption is that the profit motive will encourage producers to develop and market any technologies that will save consumers money at current energy prices, and that economic motives will similarly prompt consumers to purchase and use such technologies. Because of the change in policy, it is timely to examine the demand side of the national energy system in particular, to gain insight into the likely effects of increased reliance on market forces to meet consumers' energy needs.3 Any analysis of energy on the demand side must flow from assumptions, explicit or implicit, about energy consumers and the determinants of their behavior.
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From page 19... ...
The first focuses on the energy consumer -- the ways consumers make decisions about energy use and the cognitive, attitudinal, and interpersonal influences on their behavior. The second describes the environment in which energy consumers behave -- an environment of social, economic, and institutional forces that produces the information consumers get, shapes social values, and sets the boundaries within which consumers choose.
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From page 20... ...
It is probably misleading to conceive of consumers treating energy efficiency as strictly a question of investment when they are not likely to consider the alternatives to energy efficiency as investments. In households, other important energy decisions are made when furnaces, water heaters, refrigerators, and the like wear out.
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From page 21... ...
Others models of consumer behavior may be more applicable in many situations. Energy Consumer as Consumer In this model, residential consumers think of their homes and automobiles as consumer goods, that is, as providing necessities and pleasures.
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From page 22... ...
Among energy investments, the usual preference for storm windows before wall insulation may reflect the same phenomenon: storm windows are attractive and may decrease the physical effort of home upkeep; insulation offers a faster return on investment but lacks these consumer benefits. Energy Consumer as Member of a Social Group In this model, homes and automobiles have social meaning.
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From page 23... ...
It is appropriate to ask what sorts of energy consumers most closely follow which models, and in what kinds of circumstances one model or another furnishes insights into how energy consumers behave. For example, it seems reasonable to expect that corporate energy decisions, more than residential ones, follow the investment model.
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From page 24... ...
Consumers might imitate careful driving techniques or the shutting off of lights, but would probably not readily imitate the installation of insulation in walls or the purchase of fuel-efficient water heaters. The latter sorts of actions are easily influenced, though, by communication with friends and associates.
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From page 25... ...
Second, when a friend or colleague adopts some energy innovation (e.g., a solar water heater or the practice of car pooling) , that adoption represents a vicarious experiment for the consumer who will see or hear of the results.
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From page 26... ...
; obese individuals desirous of losing weight who were induced to make a greater commitment to join a weight reducing program lost significantly more weight than a control group of obese individuals who were similarly desirous of losing weight. Moreover, the effect of commitment was not temporary; the magnitude of the difference was even greater after 6 months than after 3 weeks.
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From page 27... ...
_ . _ This partially explains the failure of many energy consumers to take economically justifiable action to save energy.
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From page 28... ...
examined consumer response to an experiment with time-of-day electricity pricing in Wisconsin. Residential consumers were experimentally assigned to a variety of electricity rate structures that included a large jump in rates during the peak demand periods on weekdays.
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From page 29... ...
The following discussion focuses on some of the social forces external to individuals and their immediate social circles that constitute important influences on energy consumption. Energy Unawareness and Energy Invisibility In the United States many actions that affect energy consumption are taken with little thought about energy.
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From page 30... ...
So the energy required to heat the home was quite visible to the home owner. Moreover, the act of heating the home required efforts that were roughly proportional to the cost of heating the home.
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From page 31... ...
We were unaware as home owners, automobile buyers, architects, industrial designers, and managers of business. What are the consequences of this history?
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From page 32... ...
The increased need for air conditioning is literally built in; consumers cannot save energy in these buildings by using natural ventilation. Because of such changes in the national stock of energy-using equipment, no amount of energy awareness can quickly reverse the effects of our history of energy invisibility.
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From page 33... ...
For one thing, energy consumption varies greatly with local conditions: climate, fuel type, structural characteristics of the building or equipment that uses energy, maintenance practices, and so forth. Thus, the cost of any energy service system varies with the locality.
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From page 34... ...
Since there can be no incontrovertible source of knowledge in a fluid situation, there is room for disagreement -- and incentive for disagreement continues to be provided by conflicting economic interests and divergent bureaucratic and disciplinary points of view. In the Northeast, for example, heating oil suppliers emphasize the possible savings from improving furnace efficiency, while gas suppliers stress lower fuel costs.
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From page 35... ...
This undermines exhortations by other parts of the government to save energy, and it sets the stage for disappointment and discrediting of the agency when the program falls short of the unrealistic expectations. The same sort of overselling happens with conservation programs as well.
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From page 36... ...
At the municipal level, budget constraints limit support of public transit systems. In all, consumers get the message that energy efficiency is not as important to government as public statements suggest.
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From page 37... ...
Consumers who know this will be appropriately wary of information; those who do not will sometimes be satisfied, other times disillusioned. Different Levels of Trust in Information Sources s Most of the public and private institutions that now offer energy information have interacted with the public before.
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From page 38... ...
Enough is known, however, to determine that information sources do make a difference. There is anecdotal evidence drawn from the experiences of communitybased programs that offer energy conservation services for households.
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From page 39... ...
Suggestions about ways to improve the system of energy information may emerge from further analysis. Uncertainty in The Energy Supply System As we have already noted, accurate estimation of the net costs of energy options depends on knowledge of the future.
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From page 40... ...
Shortages of energy supply are seen to portend national weakness, economic stagnation, and the end of The good life. n Thus, the rhetoric of energy independence was used to argue for energy production, and the "moral equivalent of war" was a national mobilization of capital to produce energy and of consumers to sacrifice, but for a common good.
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From page 41... ...
In suab ways as these the symbolic context of energy consumption and conservation affects consumer behavior and public reactions to energy policy; the symbolic meanings are themselves shaped, in part, by policy. Limited Choice Most of the above discussion implicitly assumes that consumers are free to choose among actions that imply different amounts of energy use.
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From page 42... ...
But without extraordinary and expensive effort to educate the mass of consumers about the life-cycle cost of owning and operating appliances, a manufacturer who chose to produce efficient equipment would quickly lose the market to a manufacturer of inefficient machines with lower price tags. Because consumer preferences cannot be expected to induce manufacturers to reliably produce efficient equipment, government programs have recently required energy efficiency labels to be placed on appliances and automobiles.
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From page 43... ...
The energy costs are more significant to the producers, but their accounting practices may not make these costs salient, and their focus may be more on increasing the quantity of goods and services produced than on lowering operating costs. Paying for Energy Costs "Passed Through n Some energy consumers have the power to respond to higher energy costs by passing them on to other consumers.
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From page 44... ...
In some cities with rent control, automatic pass-along of energy costs has been written into control ordinances as the only simple way to prevent widespread bankruptcy among landlords. Additional limitations on choice in the rental housing market are created by the poor condition of the business generally, the unavailability of energy credits, and the common belief that energy investments do not increase property values (Bleviss, 1980)
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From page 45... ...
In this way, past political decisions, such as those to invest in public highways rather than public transit, have significantly changed the environment in which residential consumers choose places to live and corporations choose places to build plants and offices. The energy implications have been far-reaching.
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From page 46... ...
Federal energy credits have lowered the eventual cost of energy-efficient equipment to home owners and businesses, although not to
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From page 47... ...
Some utilities have sponsored low-interest and interest-free loan programs for energy efficiency, and these have had some limited success getting capital to home owners. An additional problem is that both firms and financial institutions have tended to favor investments in productive capacity over investments in energy efficiency.
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From page 48... ...
Thus, to the extent that market forces operate to promote the value of efficiency, they may work to the detriment of the value of adaptability in an emergency. SUM - RY We have described major features of the national energy system that affect energy consumers.
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From page 49... ...
The trend toward energy invisibility teas eroded consumer knowledge and changed the physical structure of energy-using equipment so that even when energy costs are high and salient, it is difficult to respond effectively. Conflicting, confusing, and inaccurate information is an inherent feature of the environment of energy consumers; providing more useful information is more a problem of modifying information systems so that consumers can find credible information than a matter of collecting technical data to improve the accuracy of knowledge.
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From page 50... ...
Further work by the committee will build on awareness of these issues. It is likely to include examination of the workings of past and present policies that affect energy consumers and discussion of the implications of alternative possibilities for making the national energy system more effective in meeting the needs of consumers and the nation.
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