The Behaviour, Practices and Demand Theme aims to advance the understanding of energy demand from households (which accounts for 1/3rd of the total energy consumption in the UK). To achieve this goal it will develop agent-based models that will show how demand co-evolves with changes in practices, supply, and energy policy. These models will draw upon the currently developing, but still embryonic, research underway internationally about the nature of the influences that impact consumer demand for energy.
Rather than adopting the conventional and not very successful assumption that householders are rational and individual utility maximisers, the approach will be based on the concept of ‘social practices’, where a social practice is a bundle of technologies, skills, and meanings that can arise, diffuse, evolve and disappear.
Through ethnographic data collection and agent-based modelling, we will formulate an ecology of energy consuming social practices and use this to understand the critical points where policy interventions may be able to affect behaviour.
Research questions
- How and why do new energy-related social practices arise, recruit practitioners, evolve, fossilise and disappear?
- What are the interactions between energy supply delivery and charging mechanisms, and consumers’ social practices?
- How can consumers’ practices be influenced through policy changes?