Can social impacts promote residents’ pro-environmental intentions and behaviour: Evidence from large-scale demand response experiment in China

Bo Wang, Zihan Yang, Thi Le Hoa Pham, Nana Deng and Heran Du

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 340, issue C, No S0306261923003951

Abstract: Energy demand-side management is crucial for deep decarbonization. Consumers’ behavioral intentions and real pro-environmental behaviour have been widely discussed separately. However, few studies assessed the intention-behaviour gap and limited empirical evidence has been provided on how to promote the intention-behaviour on residential electricity demand response (DR) project. Here, we identified four intention-behaviour relationship by k-means cluster and analyzed the impacts of normative social influence and peer influence on the intention and behaviour based on large scale incentive-based DR experiment and matching questionnaires data in China. We found that the intention-behaviour gap exists in 77.94% respondents, only 16.09% respondents belong to inclined actors who has both high intention and high electricity savings behaviour. Peer influence and normative social influence can significantly increase intention to participate the DR project and energy-saving behaviour during peak hours, and the impact is larger for respondents with high family endowments and educational level. Specifically, 30.6% of the electricity saving behaviour has been explained directly by the peer influence, while normative social influence electricity saving behaviour through behavioural intention. Besides these, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions also play an important role in promoting the intention and electricity-saving behaviour. Our study further provides feasible solutions to facilitate the residential DR for policymakers.

Keywords: Intention-behaviour relationship; Peer influence; Normative social influence; Demand response experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261923003951
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:340:y:2023:i:c:s0306261923003951

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121031

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().