Abstract
This chapter presents a detailed and critical review of behavioral experiments in energy conservation. Detailed because it serves to develop methodological directives for this study, and critical because a thorough analysis shows that both from a policy and research point of view many of the experiments to be reviewed leave much to be desired. This review and critical evaluation will be presented in Section 3.3.
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Notes
Portions of this section were adapted from Ester, P., Methoden ter bevordering van milieuvriendelijk en energiebewust consumptief gedrag, Vrije Universiteit, Insituut voor Milieuvraagstukken, Amsterdam, 1979a.
See also: Anderson and McDougall (1980), Frankena (1977), Joerges (1979), McDougall and Anderson (1982).
Studies of peaking behavior are also excluded from this review (see e.g. Heberlein and Warriner, 1982; Kohlenberg, Philips and Proctor, 1976; Blakely, 1978 ).
See also Craig and McCann (1978b).
See Midden, Meter, Weenig, and Zieverink (1981) for an English version of the results of this study.
During my stay (1981) as a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Department of Psychology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the senior author Richard Wlnett was kind enough to show me both videotapes.
See for further details of the experimental set-up Winett, Hatcher, Fort, Leckliter, Love, Riley, and Fishback (1982).
The videotape program was shown in a presentation by Richard Winett at the Institute for Environmental Studies, Free University, September 24, 1982.
Some researchers even suggested that, if possible, feedback should be part of any behavioral program on residential energy conservation ( Geller, Winett and Everett, 1982 ).
This study is part of the Princeton University Twin Rivers project (see Socolow and Sonderegger, 1976).
Becker refers with respect to this outcome to the work of Locke (1966, 1967, 1968) on the relationship between goal difficulty and task performance. See also Ilgen, Fisher and Taylor (1979), and Locke, Saari, Shaw and Latham (1981).
See for differences in feedback calculation: Becker (1977), Becker and Seligman (1978), and Seligman and Darley (1977).
For an excellent review of the relationship between responsiveness to feedback and rebates at the one hand, and income, energy expenditures, and energy budget share at the other hand, see Winkler and Winett (1982).
Some studies, however, did not find major differences in energy use between volunteers and nonvolunteers (urinett, Neale, Williams, Yokley and Kauder, 1978; Hayes and Cone, 1981 ).
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© 1985 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Ester, P. (1985). Behavioral Interventions for Promoting Consumer Energy Conservation. In: Consumer Behavior and Energy Conservation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7710-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7710-6_3
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