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

Abstract

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.