The aim of BECaUSE is to study methods for helping people change their daily lifestyle in order to consume less energy in their home. Adopting a more sustainable lifestyle is highly necessary given the threat of global climate change. The knowledge of global warming and the awareness of its consequences increase the need of sustainable solutions towards a lifestyle causing less greenhouse gas emissions.
In order to generate knowledge of how psychological factors will predict the willingness and capacity of the individual to adopt pro-environmental behavior this study will focus on the reduction of household energy use such as electricity and hot water use.
Despite a vast number of studies with a focus on factors effecting attitudes and intentions to change behavior towards a more sustainable lifestyle, research analyzing factors with predicting effects on the actual change of behavior is still lacking. Until now most successful interventions towards household energy conservation, involving reinforcement and feedback, have neither included objective measurements of actual changes of behavior nor analyses of mediating psychological factors with a long term perspective.
The aim of this project is to fill that gap within both swedish- and international research of environmental psychology by developing and analyzing interventions with assessments of objective individual changes of behavior in terms of actual household energy use(not by self report). Further to analyze the influence of six psychological factors on the achieved behavior change. The interventions will also include follow-up studies analyzing the maintenance of change over time.
The project will examine how an intervention with motivation-increasing design and techniques can influence behavior change towards a reduction of residential energy use. Differentiated energy use for daily domestic behaviors will be monitored via an internet-based system.
Psychological factors, including social value orientation, awareness of consequences, environmental concern, locus of control, moral judgment competence and sense of coherence, will be studied within a greater sample in order to generate reference data as well as within the intervention. Reinforcing strategies will be carried out in order to enhance motivation for change and follow-up studies will analyze the maintenance of change.
The overall research question to be answered is how to go from pro-environmental attitudes and values to an actual change of behavior and maintenance of that adopted new lifestyle? Are there some psychological factors which increase the willingness to adopt a more pro-environmental behavior? If so, how can we identify those factors that influence environmentally responsible behavior and show consideration for these factors within an intervention?
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Project leader: Richard Ahlström
Project group: Kerstin Weimer, Jan Lisspers
External collaboration:
Financing: (internal)