Behavioral changes through consumer empowerment - evidence from German case studies

Panel: 8. Dynamics of consumption

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Kerstin Fink, IWAR/TU Darmstadt and European Institute for Energy Research, Germany
Pia Laborgne, European Institute for Energy Research, Germany
Andreas Koch, European Institute for Energy Research, Germany
Sandra Wassermann, Universität Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract

The paper presents results of the interdisciplinary project “consuming energy sustainably – consuming sustainable energy: Heat energy in the field of tensions between social predictors, economic conditions and ecological consciousness” (2008-2011).

The scientific objective of the research project is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of heat energy consumption in the household sector in Germany. An application-oriented objective of the project is to identify incentives and constraints for sustainable heat consumption for deriving recommendations for action aimed at relevant actors. For this aim, the project has participating practitioners from different sectors for discussing results and for jointly developing viable ways for achieving energy efficiency and sufficiency.

One crucial factor for sustainable energy consumption is the role of consumer empowerment. We therefore did research on a variety of aspects in regard to the availability of adequate information and the possibility of co-determination and participation in the residential sector. This aspect of empowerment is the topic of the present paper.

In the first part, the paper gives a short overview of the state of the art of the literature of consumer empowerment in connection with sustainable heat energy consumption from which we derived our theses, which led our empirical work. In the second part we describe the methods we used and the main results of our media analysis of German information brochures and the evaluation of focus groups we have conducted in order to discuss questions of adequate information. In the third part we present results and a guide on tenants’ information and participation in the framework of energy-saving renovations. It is developed on the basis of literature and qualitative interviews with representatives of housing societies in cooperation with our participating practitioners.