I cannot live without air conditioning! The role of identity, values and situational factors on cooling consumption patterns in India

Olufolahan O Osunmuyiwa,Sarah R Payne,P Vigneswara Ilavarasan,Andrew D Peacock,David P Jenkins

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2020.101634

Abstract

As the world continues to deal with climate-induced heat events, sustainable energy behaviours, or lifestyles combined with non-behavioural interventions have been identified as crucial pathways to curb the demand for air conditioners. Typically, ecological communities serve as a reference point for sustainable lifestyles as they have strong environmental self-identity and values and are more likely to further engage in pro-environmental and energy-saving actions. Yet, it is unknown if individuals within these communities will act as expected, especially when confronted with extreme climatic challenges like heatwaves. It is also unclear which factors will define individual responses to these challenges. Utilising environmental self-identity and Value-Belief-Norm theories, this paper examines factors underlying cooling consumption behaviours of households living in a Universal Community with strong environmental world views in India. Twenty in-depth qualitative interviews with residents, thematically analysed, found that while people expressed strong environmental self-identity, preferences for air conditioner use was often mediated by hedonic factors such as comfort and sleep. Moral norms played a positive role in how people operated their air conditioners. Yet, when faced with the choice of using energy-efficient air conditioners, biospheric concern was of limited importance while situational factors like cost and functionality were more pivotal. The above results raise interesting questions around the difficulties that might emerge in changing preferences around air conditioning behaviours in non-environmental communities, especially, if environmentally conscious communities which are expected to be “the locus of change for energy efficiency actions” are significantly influenced by hedonic values.

Highlights

As the world continues to deal with climate-induced heat events, sustainable energy behaviours, or lifestyles combined with non-behavioural interventions have been identified as crucial pathways to curb the demand for air conditioners
Based on the above conceptualisations and using a community in the Global South who identify as environmentally sustainable, this study evaluates to what extent environmental-self-identity and values can explain sustainable cooling behaviour; explore how and when environmental-self-identity diverge from values; identify the role of situational factors in this divergence and understand how this will affect current and future energy behaviour
Most participants labelled themselves as environmentalists. This identity construction was formed because they were born into the Universal Community (UC) or had left “a previous life” to embrace a sustainable lifestyle

Summary

Introduction

As the world continues to deal with climate-induced heat events, sustainable energy behaviours, or lifestyles combined with non-behavioural interventions have been identified as crucial pathways to curb the demand for air conditioners. Ecological communities serve as a reference point for sustainable lifestyles as they have strong environmental self-identity and values and are more likely to further engage in pro-environmental and energy-saving actions It is unknown if individuals within these communities will act as expected, especially when confronted with extreme climatic challenges like heatwaves. To address the effects of AC on power consumption, especially from the residential sector, energy demand scholars argue that reorienting household behaviours towards pro-environmental cooling actions could unlock enormous energy and environmental gains [2] Such gains are underpinned by the individuals’ own assessments of environmental actions and are either motivated by the individuals environmental self-identity (i.e. the perception of own actions as environmentally friendly) or by their intrinsic values (i.e. goals that define what people consider as pivotal in their lives) [3,4]. Energy Research & Social Science 69 (2020) 101634 conditions required by heat-sensitive technologies [11], the association of ACs with social politeness in Japan [12], and the collective resignation by participants in Singapore that ‘removing ACs from the lives of most Singaporeans was impractical and almost impossible’[13]

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