Behavioral approaches to energy conservation in organizations: a selected review of the literature

Abstract

Despite the widely acknowledged importance of energy conservation and the steadily growing volume of research in this area, energy conservation in the institutional context has received little attention. No doubt many strategies and approaches have been applied in a variety of institutions, but these have generally not been based on any systematic research. The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the behavioral approaches that have been used and to extend this material to the context of energy conservation in organizational settings, and in particular to campus sustainability initiatives.

The discussion of behaviorally-based conservation strategies will focus on the role of two main factors: motivation and information. Both factors have been investigated by the behavioral sciences because of their hypothesized effect on human behavior. While these can be labeled readily, they are, in fact, often not clearly distinguishable from each other. Information can in itself provide some motivation and incentives can in themselves have informational properties. Nonetheless, it is useful to distinguish these two factors and this document will examine research findings which speak to their effectiveness in different situations.