MULTIPLE MOTIVATIONS BEHIND ENERGY EFFICIENCY BEHAVIOURS: THE INHIBITORY ROLE OF HEDONIC CONSEQUENCES

TONELLO GRACIELA; JAKOVCEVIC ADRIANA

Congreso; 10th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology; 2013

Multiple motivations may underlie different household energy saving behaviours. Some of them may promote particular curtailment behaviours whereas other may inhibit them. For example, lowering heating Tº at night can be motivated by reducing CO2 emissions, safeguarding a resource for others, saving money, or achieving more thermal comfort. The objective of this study was to determine which of these motivations (biospheric, altruistic, egoistic or hedonic) better predicted particular household energy saving behaviours. With that aim, a survey was administered to 275 argentinian citizens, who were required to state: how often they perform energy efficiency actions related to lighting, heating, air conditioning, appliances use and showering as well as their level of agreement with hedonic, egoistic, biospheric and altruistic consequences of each behavior. Regression analyses indicated that all models significantly explained between 14% and 5% of each behaviour variance (Adj. Rs2; ps