Energy Efficiency

, Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 597–611 | Cite as

Levels of consumers’ agency and capacity as predictors for electricity demand reduction in the residential sector

Original Article
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Abstract

A field study of 50 households in a collective community in Israel provides initial support for the hypotheses about the relations between actors’ agency, capacity and electricity demand reduction. ‘Agency’ refers to actors’ willingness and ability to make their own free choices and ‘capacity’ refers to actors’ ability to perform the choices they made. According to the hypotheses, change is more likely to happen when actors’ levels of agency and capacity are high; unlikely to happen when the levels are low and uncertain when there is a mismatch between levels of agency and capacity (one is high and the other low). In the research, levels of agency and capacity regarding 11 energy saving actions were self-reported and electricity consumption was metered before and during energy saving campaign. Findings show that levels of agency were lower than those of capacity for no-cost actions which require high engagement, while levels of capacity were lower than those of agency for high-cost action which require low engagement. In addition, households with high agency and high capacity reduced their electricity consumption by 9.39 % (on average); those with low agency and low capacity increased their consumption by 6.67 %; and those with a mismatch between agency and capacity reduced their consumption by 1.91 %.

Keywords

Agency and capacity Middle-out framework Electricity demand reduction Residential sector 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The EU FP7 Marie Curie CIG grant no. 303443, ‘STESS: Socio-technical approach to energy services security’ supported the writing of this paper. The authors wish to thank Dr. Tamar Trop, from Haifa University.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of SustainabilityInterdisciplinary Center (IDC)HerzliyaIsrael
  2. 2.Department of Natural Resources and Environmental ManagementHaifa UniversityHaifaIsrael

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