How to promote energy savings among households: Theoretical and practical approaches

Households are responsible for a large part of total energy requirements and CO2 emissions. We review the contribution of social and environmental psychology for understanding and promoting household energy conservation. A general framework is proposed, comprising: (1) identification and measurement of the behavior to be changed, (2) examination of the main factors underlying this behavior, (3) design and implementation of interventions to change behavior to reduce household energy use, and (4) evaluation of the effects of interventions. We discuss how psychologists empirically studied these four topics.