Energy Conservation at Home: A Critical Review on the Role of End-User Behavior

The recent literature emphasizes the significance of occupants’ behavior in shaping home energy demand. Several policies have been defined and tools and technologies have been developed to raise people’s awareness and encourage energy-saving practices at home, but households’ energy demand keeps ris...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2023-11, Vol.16 (22), p.7596
Main Authors: Marchi, Lia, Gaspari, Jacopo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative energy sources
Architecture and energy conservation
behavioral implications
Belgium
Bibliometrics
China
Clean technology
Construction
COVID-19
Eastern Europe
Energy conservation
Energy consumption
energy efficiency
Energy industry
Energy management systems
Energy resources
energy savings
Energy use
Environmental science
Green buildings
Heating
Households
intention–action gap
Keywords
Netherlands
smart metering
Sustainable development
User behavior
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The recent literature emphasizes the significance of occupants’ behavior in shaping home energy demand. Several policies have been defined and tools and technologies have been developed to raise people’s awareness and encourage energy-saving practices at home, but households’ energy demand keeps rising. The thesis is that the fundamentals on this topic are still unclear and that available tools, strategies and measures should be approached in a more integrated way, as they are not now effective enough to encourage energy savings. How these could be successfully combined is still a major knowledge gap. Thus, this article proposes a critical review of the literature to discuss the potential role of end users in energy conservation at home, preparing the ground for truly effective engagement strategies and tools to encourage behavioral change. To that end, a systematic literature review is performed, including over 130 relevant articles. According to the critical interpretation of their content, after years of technologically driven strategies, the most promising approaches capable of overcoming the intention–action gap are those more user-centered. However, relying solely on the social aspect is not effective. Synergistic integration of the two main clusters of studies has been identified as a promising field of research for the future.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en16227596