Abstract
A successful energy transition will depend not only on the development of new energy technologies, but also on changes in the patterns of individual energy-related decisions and behaviors resulting in substantial reductions in energy demand. Across scientific disciplines, most theoretical approaches that try to understand energy-related decisions and behaviors focus mainly on cognitive processes, such as computations of utility (typically economic), the impact of cognitive heuristics, or the role of individual beliefs. While these models already explain important aspects of human decisions and behavior in the energy domain, we argue that an additional consideration of the contributions of emotional processes may be very fruitful for a deeper understanding of the issue. In this contribution, we outline a theoretical perspective on energy-related decisions and behaviors that integrates emotions, elicited by a cognitive-affective appraisal of the relevance of a situation, into a response system driving adaptive decisions and behaviors. We empirically investigate the explanatory power of the model variables to predict intentions to reduce energy use, demonstrating that the appraisal-emotion variables are able to account for additional variance that is not explained by two established models focused on cognitive processes (Theory of Planned Behavior and Value-Belief-Norm Theory). Finally, we discuss how the appraisal-emotion approach may be fruitfully integrated with other existing approaches and outline some questions for future research.
Highlights
An increasing number of countries have implemented policies targeting the increased use of renewable energy sources, improved energy efficiency, and the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions. The success of this energy transition will depend on the development of new energy technologies, and on major changes in the patterns of individual energy-related decisions and behaviors resulting in substantial reductions in energy demand
The variable sets from the three theories explained 57% of the variance in intentions to reduce energy use. In this manuscript, we propose a framework that applies recent theoretical developments concerning the functionality of affective processes and emotions to the explanation of energy-relevant decisions and behaviors
Based on previous work investigating the impact of appraisal processes on the elicitation of emotion and their impact on decision-making, we proposed that a sparse set of variables consisting of appraisal criteria and emotional experiences in an energy-relevant context may help explain energy-related decisions and behaviors
Summary
An increasing number of countries have implemented policies targeting the increased use of renewable energy sources, improved energy efficiency, and the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions The success of this energy transition will depend on the development of new energy technologies, and on major changes in the patterns of individual energy-related decisions and behaviors resulting in substantial reductions in energy demand. People tend to be overly influenced by cognitive anchors (e.g., the status quo; see Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988) or by the framing of the choice situation (e.g., whether it emphasizes potential losses or gains; see Tversky and Kahneman, 1981) These biases can be exploited when decision situations are designed in a certain manner in order to “nudge” people toward decisions and behaviors that reduce energy use (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008), e.g., by changing default settings on household appliances to less energy-intensive programs
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