Beyond the attitude-behaviour gap – involvement in direct load control explained by meaningful systems of motivations, routines and housing conditions

Panel: 9. Dynamics of consumption

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Mathieu Durand-Daubin, EDF R&D, France
Cécile Caron, EDF R&D, France

Abstract

Alongside the quest for energy savings, the need for electricity demand management grows in a context where networks have to become smarter to lighten the cost of higher peaks and less flexible generation. The efficiency of this demand management will rely on a good understanding of people’s consumption behaviours and reactions to the signals coming from the system. In this work, the diversity of people reactions is explored based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a direct load control field trial involving 473 households. How do people perceive those interventions? How do they change their daily practices? Who accepts the signal and why?

This diversity in the energy related gestures is often thought to result directly from people attitudes, especially those toward environmental issues, according to planned behaviour theories. However, many empirical studies reveal a gap between attitudes and behaviours. Various interpretations of this gap can be found from measurement issues, to the strength of unconscious routines; this gap can even be considered irrelevant, like attitudes themselves, when referring to the social practice theory.

In this experiment, the causes of the reactions diversity were investigated by means of in depth interviews, observations at home, quantitative surveys and temperature and consumption monitoring. People’s energy projects were described from their motivations to take part in the experiment to the underlying fields of meanings and the antagonisms structuring them: individualism/community, comfort/frugality, transformation/balance, and efficiency/morality. The relationships between households’ attitudes, routines and material environment was first described in the qualitative study before the same structures were searched for in the quantitative data, leading to eight clusters of people showing differentiated reactions to the load shedding signal.

As a result, it was possible to describe consistent combinations of attitudes, routines, and housing characteristics that together explain the reactions to the signal. In this model, attitudes play an indirect role on the final behaviour, as part of a complex but intelligible system.