Elsevier

Energy Policy

Volume 107, August 2017, Pages 43-52
Energy Policy

The power of social norms for reducing and shifting electricity use

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.04.029Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Study participants value not only energy costs but also emissions reductions.

  • Social norms encourage emissions reductions.

  • Social norms may provide non-price incentives to reduce household energy consumption.

  • Suggests bridge between research insights regarding the importance of cultural factors and individualistic policy.

  • Suggests approach to harnessing norms to both reduce emissions and facilitate demand response.

Abstract

New technologies are creating possibilities for making household energy consumption visible. With these technologies come opportunities for harnessing the power of social norms (viewed here as rules that are socially enforced) to affect energy consumption. But will those norms favor reductions in energy use? To answer this question, we conduct three online experiments with U.S. participants to assess individual values and normative expectations regarding household carbon emissions. We find that participants both value reducing carbon emissions and expect that others support reductions. The results have implications for non-monetary strategies for affecting household energy consumption. In particular, they suggest that it may be possible to harness the power of social norms not only to directly affect household electricity consumption, but also to shift time of use in ways that facilitate increased incorporation of renewable sources of electricity generation, and therefore a reduced carbon footprint for the grid.

Introduction

Household energy consumption is scrutinized, in large part, because of the relationship between residential energy use and climate change. After transportation, household energy consumption is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the United States (U.S.) for the residential sector (Jones and Kammen, 2011, United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), 2016), and residential emissions constitute over one-third of overall emissions in the U.S. (Vandenbergh et al., 2010). Accordingly, a large body of social science research seeks to explain household energy use (e.g., Abrahamse et al., 2005; Ehrhardt-Martinez et al., 2010; Stern and Aronson, 1984). Much of this work highlights the importance of cultural factors in shaping patterns of energy consumption (e.g., Lutzenhiser, 1992; Schot et al., 2016; Shove, 2003).

Despite evidence for the importance of cultural factors, American policy makers and utility companies responsible for serving households tend to focus on incentives directed at individuals (Lutzenhiser, 2014, Schelly, 2014). Thus, policies provide rebates for energy efficient appliances and insulation upgrades. Utilities study incentive structures for time of use, trying to identify, for example, incentives that effectively shift use from peak to off-peak times (e.g., Faruqui and Sergici, 2010). The most prominent use of non-financial approaches relies on information about how the individual compares to others in order to motivate the individual to change. (e.g., Allcott, 2011). This is a fairly thin treatment of culture, however. The research reported here uses experimental methods to provide deeper understanding of cultural influences that have implications for management of the electric grid.

There are likely many reasons for the continued utility emphasis on incentives directed at individuals and households (Lutzenhiser, 2014, Shove, 2010). To a large degree, the energy efficiency industry and the electricity delivery system are not structured in ways that facilitate recognition of the complex energy consumption dynamics described by social scientists. In the context of household electricity use, two features of the industry are noteworthy. First, in the U.S., energy is primarily delivered to and metered for households, not neighborhoods or communities. From the perspective of the electricity delivery system, the unitary household is the relevant unit. Second, while electricity use is metered, consumers and utilities have historically only had access to data on aggregate monthly use. Thus, much household energy consumption has been invisible (Shove, 2000, Stern et al., 2016; but see Berker, 2013). This invisibility has a number of implications: People cannot see how their household practices translate into electricity use and therefore cannot implement their energy preferences. Energy use is private, therefore normative pressures cannot operate. And, while norms regarding social practices (e.g., norms of comfort, cleanliness, and convenience) are salient to households, norms regarding energy conservation are considerably less clear. The invisibility of electricity use means that people need not (and indeed cannot) consider social norms that might directly constrain energy consumption decisions (Hechter, 1987, Lapinski and Rimal, 2005, Willer et al., 2009).

New information and communication technologies (ICT) create the potential to address these issues. In particular, new apps can be integrated into existing energy delivery systems. Apps are inherently individualistic in that they are installed on an individual's (or household's) technology (e.g., smart phone, tablet, etc.) and are used by individuals. They thus are compatible with an electricity system designed to serve households. This is particularly true for the electricity delivery system, which is in many places being upgraded with new “smart meters” that can potentially communicate with household energy apps. In addition, although apps are owned and operated by individuals, they facilitate social connection and communication. This capability means that while apps do not allow full-blown manipulations of the many elements of culture that are relevant for energy consumption, they do create the potential for engaging social norms. This is because apps provide mechanisms for increasing the visibility of electricity consumption, not only to members of the household (see Ellegård and Palm, 2011 for illustration of how visibility can lead consumers to reflect on their usage), but also to the larger community. Such visibility is essential for social norms to operate.

If new technologies are compatible with the existing energy delivery system, and can help to overcome the issue of energy invisibility in ways that facilitate the operation of social norms, then it would be possible, in principle, for policy makers and utilities to harness the power of those norms. But, if norms do not encourage people to reduce their emissions, then such efforts would be wasted. The question becomes, what norms regulate household energy consumption?

In the U.S., the answer to this question is not clear. The global warming debate is highly politicized, with prominent conservatives arguing that man-made climate change does not exist and liberals arguing that climate change is occurring and must be addressed (McCright and Dunlap, 2003, McCright and Dunlap, 2011a, McCright and Dunlap, 2011b). These competing arguments are proclaimed by high-level elected officials at the state and national level, and publicized by conservative, mainstream, and liberal media. These dynamics mean that social norms regulating energy consumption and the production of carbon emissions are not obvious. Even though the vast majority of Americans are aware of the climate change issue (Shwom et al., 2015) and are concerned about it (e.g., Leiserowitz et al., 2013), they also have good reason to expect that, whatever their own personal beliefs, many others do not support efforts to reduce emissions. Given the politicized nature of the global warming debate, and the visibility of climate deniers, it is unclear just what norms prevail in the U.S.

We seek to understand whether norms encourage household reduction of carbon emissions. We focus in particular on household electricity use in the U.S. (setting aside other sources of residential emissions such as natural gas, wood, etc.). Below, we describe what we mean by “social norms.” We develop three hypotheses that make predictions about what we would expect to find if U.S. social norms favor reducing carbon emissions. We describe the three online experiments that test our hypotheses and present the results. Following the presentation of our findings, we discuss the broader policy domain in which household energy norms are situated. In particular, we discuss carbon emissions not just in the context of household electricity use, but also in the broader context of the electricity delivery system. We explore possible implications of our findings for this broader policy arena. We conclude by noting some limitations of our research and suggesting directions for future work.

Section snippets

Theory and hypotheses

For purposes of this paper, we define norms as rules or expectations about behavior that are socially enforced (Bendor and Swistak, 2001, Coleman, 1990, Horne, 2009). We want to be clear that when we talk about norms, we are not referring to the descriptive norms that have been the focus of substantial energy research and utility efforts (Allcott, 2011, Nolan et al., 2008, Schultz et al., 2007). Harnessing the power of descriptive norms involves letting people know how they are doing compared

Methods

To test our hypotheses we conducted a series of online experiments. The first two studies are vignette experiments and are purely hypothetical. The third study uses a modified trust game to create a setting in which participants believe that their decisions in the experiment have monetary consequences. Vignette experiments use short stories to manipulate experimental conditions, and then ask participants about their reactions. Vignette studies are useful for evaluating the effects of

Policy context

Utility companies and policy-makers are under increasing pressure to address global warming. Utility company practices have implications for carbon emissions in at least two ways. First, because demand for electricity is higher at some times of day than at others, utilities need to maintain generation plants that can be quickly brought on line to meet peak load. These plants typically rely on fossil fuels. Accordingly, shifting customer demand away from peak use times could reduce the need to

Conclusion and policy implications

New technologies facilitate making consumer behavior visible and thereby harness the power of social norms to affect energy-related behavior. Further these technologies can coordinate consumer decisions with grid management in ways that could impact the composition of the energy generation mix on which utility companies rely. But this can only happen if social norms and individual values support reductions in emissions. To begin to assess this issue, we use three online experiments to measure

Funding sources

This work was supported by grants from the Washington State University Energy Systems Innovation Center (ESIC) #2320-9863 and by the National Science Foundation #1441357.

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