Who Is Behaving? Consequences for Energy Policy of Concept Confusion

Kajsa Ellegård and Jenny Palm
Additional contact information
Kajsa Ellegård: Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Campus Valla, SE-58183 Linköping, Sweden
Jenny Palm: Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Campus Valla, SE-58183 Linköping, Sweden

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 8, 1-20

Abstract: Policies to reduce household energy use usually target the individual customer. This is probably one explanation to the limited effect of many information policies, because two concepts with different meanings are confused: individual and household. In most contexts, an individual stands for what s/he does, but in the policy context, an individual is taken to represent the entire household. This is not problematic for a single-person household, but, in a multi-person household, activities performed by different household members influence the whole household’s energy use. This paper illuminates problems arising from confusing the concepts of household and individual when developing policies to reduce household energy use. Examples relate to indoor space heating and energy-intensive home-based activities. The results indicate that it is analytically simple to consider individuals at home, as well as their activities using electrical appliances contributing to heating, but much more complicated to take the whole household into consideration. Our model provides a basis for better-targeted information actions to reduce energy use. Also, empirically based models capturing variations between households with different activity patterns are important for developing policies resulting in reduced energy use for space heating in multi-person households.

Keywords: energy use; household; individual; consumer; indoor space heating; policy; energy conservation; time diaries; activities; information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/8/7618/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/8/7618/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:8:p:7618-7637:d:53217

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().