Representing the demand side: 'deficit' beliefs about domestic electricity users

Hannah Devine-Wright and Patrick Devine-Wright, De Montfort University

Keywords

social representations, demand side management, renewable energy, deficit model

Abstract

The increased deployment of renewable energy technologies, particularly at the local or building level, is creating new challenges for the UK electricity supply industry. These challenges include the potential for new demand side roles and responsibilities associated with domestic electricity customers becoming electricity co-producers (e.g. Marvin, Chappells and Guy, 1999; Shove and Chappells, 2002). This paper aims to identify how UK electricity industry stakeholders represent domestic electricity consumers, drawing upon the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961/1976) and to investigate to what extent, if at all, these representations are (or might) evolve as a consequence of greater domestic-scale renewable energy deployment. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of the UK electricity supply industry. Thematic and content analysis showed that a majority of interviewees represented human behaviour in a 'deficit' manner as either a consequence of a lack of information, appropriate technologies or economic incentives. Although interviewees acknowledged the limitations of these models, they were the dominant means of representing the domestic electricity customer within both non-renewable and renewable contexts. It is suggested that current UK government schemes simply reinforce an information deficit model of human behaviour and fail to change representations of the customer towards a more complex 'sustainable' or 'citizenship' model of human behaviour associated with a participatory rather than managed approach to the demand side. Thus the potential for systemic change from a centralised to a more decentralised system integrating renewable energy technologies was constrained by both industry regulations and by commonly-held beliefs representations and expectations about the typical electricity consumer.