Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 69, Issue 5, 15 March 2010, Pages 1104-1114
Ecological Economics

Analysis
Not irrational but habitual: The importance of “behavioural lock-in” in energy consumption

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.12.004Get rights and content

Abstract

A substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits. The existence of habits — not fully conscious forms of behaviour — is important as it contradicts rational choice theory. Their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives. This is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon-based Socio-Technical System constrains and shapes consumers' choices through structural forces. Habits being potentially “counterintentional,” they may explain the “efficiency paradox” in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population. Policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits. For instance, targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed. The results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure. Our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions. This “unconsciousness” is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures. Given the other characteristics of habits, the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising.

Introduction

“Most of the time what we do is what we do most of the time” (Townsend and Bever, 2001: 2). This often-quoted sentence within the realm of social psychology is meant to emphasize that much of our behaviour in daily life is characterised by repetition. From the empirical work of Wendy Wood and colleagues (Wood et al., 2002, Quinn and Wood, 2005), we know that many activities are not only repetitive in frequency but they also are performed in stable contexts. Such consistency sets a favourable breeding ground for habits (i.e. behavioural predisposition to repeat a well-practiced action given a context) to develop (Ouellette and Wood, 1998). Once formed in those circumstances of both high frequency and stability, habits then become a strong predictor of behaviour “over and above intentions, suggesting that such behaviour is initiated without much deliberation and thought” (Danner et al., 2008: 246).

As already discussed in Maréchal (2009), the concept of habits is essential in analysing the determinants of domestic energy consumption as it sheds an insightful light on the puzzling question of why it keeps rising even though there is an evident increase of awareness and concern about energy-related environmental issues such as climate change. Indeed, if we subscribe to the idea that energy-consuming behaviours — such as switching off the lights, turning off appliances, etc. — are often guided by habits and that deeply ingrained habits can become counterintentional (Verplanken and Faes, 1999), it then follows that people may often display “locked-in” practices in their daily energy consumption behaviour.

Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to provide an illustration of the role played by habits in explaining the reduced effectiveness of traditional instruments such as incentives. More precisely, it will serve to underline the importance — for policy-makers — of specifically addressing the performance context of habits if they wish to reduce domestic energy consumption. It follows from the analysis performed in this paper that the features displayed by habits should be fully acknowledged and accounted for prior to designing measures aimed at reducing domestic energy consumption.

This paper builds on an empirical analysis that consists of three sets of data. The first one comes from a questionnaire that was submitted to the visitors of the Brussels Motor Shows in the framework of a larger study on “clean vehicles” (Englert et al., 2009). This set is mainly used to illustrate the implications of the specific features displayed by habits such as their low degree of consciousness. The second set of data comes from a sociological study on energy behaviours in the framework of the Brussels Energy Challenge. The objective is to empirically assess the importance of habits in domestic energy consumption through including questions on habits within the questionnaire submitted to the participants of the Challenge. This analysis also serves to see which dimensions of the concept of habits are perceived as the most salient in the field of energy consumption. Finally, the third empirical analysis contained in this paper is dedicated to demonstrate the higher receptivity to a given measure of those people that recently experienced a change of context (i.e. people whose previously acquired habits have been disturbed). To this end, the complete list of energy subsidies granted in the Brussels Region for the year 2007 is used. This amounts to a sample of 14,348 requests.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The next section briefly presents an overview of the conceptual framework within which this analysis of habits is performed. Section 3 provides a tentative definition of habits building on the insights provided by analyses in social psychology, sociology and Veblenian evolutionary economics.1 Based on that definition and the identified characteristics of habits, the fourth section presents empirical results with the objective of better understanding the influence of habits on decision-making choices (i.e. the first set of data) and of assessing the importance of habits in the specific area of domestic energy (i.e. the second set of data). The fifth section deals with the role played by habits in reducing the effectiveness of traditional measures such as energy subsidies (i.e. through analysing the results from the third set of data). Section 6 then concludes with a discussion and some policy recommendations regarding habit change.

Section snippets

The Theoretical Framework

Prior to developing our argument and discussing empirical findings, it is important to mention that looking at domestic energy consumption through using the concept of habits does not preclude the integration of wider societal influences in the picture. The stance of this paper is that habits are all the more useful in that they provide a locus that accommodates for both individual as well as structural and institutional accounts to be integrated in the analysis. Although it will be shown to be

What are Habits?

In order to shed an insightful complementary light on policy-making in the field of energy consumption through showing the crucial role played by habits, it is necessary to first provide a clear definition of what they are exactly. Looking for a characterisation of habits in a way that allows for both the evolution of structures and individuals to be understood, it appears interesting to turn to the insights from the Veblenian tradition which considers behaviours as embedded in a wider social

The Importance of Habits: An Illustration with Domestic Energy Consumption

It follows from the above characterisation that the trickiest feature of habits — both from a research and policy perspective — is undoubtedly the extent of their unconsciousness. Although they do not require much intentional effort to be set in motion, habits should not be assimilated to pure reflexes as they are “based in part on the ability of the individual to learn or acquire/absorb the particular behaviour into a cognitive schemata or script” (Limayem et al., 2001: 277).

Still, the low

Disturbing the Context: A First Step in Changing Energy Consumption Habits?

Even though deeply ingrained habits can be strong enough to counter intentions in determining behaviours, their context-dependent automaticity offers a way forward for changing them. Indeed, while their automaticity partly explains the predominance of habits over more deliberate thoughts (i.e. which come later to mind), their dependence on contextual cues also provide an important point of vulnerability (Verplanken and Wood, 2006: 91).

Along with repetition, context stability is a necessary

General Discussion and Policy Recommendations Regarding Habit Change

The empirical findings discussed above support the idea that habits do mediate the intention–behaviour relationship in the field of domestic energy consumption. More specifically, it tends to confirm that the presence of strong habits can explain the low effectiveness of traditional measures such as incentives (Maréchal, 2009). Indeed, our analysis relative to the energy subsidies shows how a perturbation of the context — and thus of its related habits — does increase the receptivity towards a

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