Heating reduction as collective action: Impact on attitudes, behavior and energy consumption in a Polish field experiment
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates the efficacy and behavioral mechanisms of integrating psychological and technological interventions to reduce heating and domestic hot water (DHW) energy consumption in Polish university dormitories. Employing a quasi-experimental mixed-methods design, it concurrently implements collective environmental appeals (psychological intervention) and automated heating-curve optimization (technological intervention) in real-world residential settings, while monitoring energy/water consumption and administering behavioral surveys—including the Social Norms Scale—to assess attitudinal shifts. Results demonstrate that the heating intervention significantly reduced energy use; moreover, each one-unit increase in perceived collective action strengthened social norm internalization by 0.38 standard deviations. In contrast, the DHW intervention triggered negative behavioral spillover, increasing both energy and water consumption. The study’s key contribution lies in empirically validating a “context-sensitive” intervention logic: collective framing enhances norm internalization, yet behavioral responsiveness is critically moderated by intervention-specific attributes—particularly controllability and visibility—thereby advancing a behavior–technology co-design paradigm for energy policy.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Heating and hot water usage account for nearly 80% of household energy consumption in the European Union. In order to reach the EU New Deal goals, new policies to reduce heat energy consumption are indispensable. However, research targeting reductions concentrates either on technical building interventions without considerations of people's behavior, or psychological interventions with no technical interference. Such interventions can be promising, but their true potential for scaling up can only be realized by testing approaches that integrate behavioral and technical solutions in tandem rather than in isolation. In this research, we study a mix of psychological and technical interventions targeting heating and hot water demand among students in Polish university dormitories. We evaluate effects on building energy consumption, behavioral spillovers and on social beliefs and attitudes in a pre-post quasi-experimental mixed-method field study in three student dormitories. Our findings reveal that the most effective approaches to yield energy savings were a direct, collectively framed request to students to reduce thermostat settings for the environment, and an automated technical adjustment of the heating curve temperature. Conversely, interventions targeting domestic hot water had unintended effects, including increased energy use and negative spillovers, such as higher water consumption. Further, we find that informing students about their active, collective participation had a positive impact on perceived social norms. Our findings highlight the importance of trialing interventions in controlled real-world settings to understand the interplay between technical systems, behaviors, and social impacts to enable scalable, evidence-based policies driving an effective and sustainable energy transition.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Reducing household heating and hot water energy consumption in EU
Integrating behavioral and technical solutions for energy savings
Assessing social and behavioral impacts of dormitory energy interventions
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Combined behavioral and technical heating interventions
Automated heating curve temperature adjustment
Collective framing to reduce thermostat settings
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