The how and what of bottom-up governance to change household energy consumption behaviour

Abstract

Advancing the energy transition requires substantial reductions in energy consumption. This calls for technological energy efficiency improvements, and more importantly for behavioural change to reduce household energy consumption.However, classical governmental command-and-control or economic instruments are only partially suitable to advance this process, particularly because energy consumption behaviour (ECB) is often performed privately at home and is thus partly out of reach of governmental regulations. Instead, energy consumption behaviour is often addressed through “bottom-up” governance (BuG), i.e., “softer types” of instruments, like information, labelling, and/or feedback instruments, implemented by a range of governance actors.Despite the relevance of BuG for changing ECB, and regular reference to the term in practice and science, there appears to be no commonly accepted understanding or comprehensive approach, detailing best-practice designs. Therefore, the aim of this paper is: (1) to develop a comprehensive conception of BuG (the what); and (2) to identify effective features of BuG arrangements to change ECB (the how). Through a systematic literature review, we develop a conceptualisation of BuG. Moreover, we outline features of BuG for ECB change, detailing tailored, multifactorial, integrated, and dynamic governance arrangements.