Social-psychological Approaches(continued)
CURENT’s research on demand response (DR)
has yielded interesting results by considering so-
cial-psychological factors. CURENT has designed
and conducted several national surveys from
2014 to 2016, aiming to investigate: 1) the mini-
mum amount of financial rewards that consum-
ers requested to adopt various DR related be-
haviors, that is, voluntarily adjusting A/C settings
for 2-3 degrees when at home, allowing utility
companies to adjust A/C settings, and shutting
down the A/C for 10-60 minutes in response to
emergency messages; and 2) how demograph-
ics (e.g., income, household size, race, political
orientation, etc.) and social-psychological fac-
tors (e.g., norms, comfort needs, energy concern,
attention to bills, and trust in utility companies)
affect the amount of financial rewards requested.
In the first 2 surveys, 1511 residents were sampled
across 48 states in the U.S. Fig. 1 shows the mini-
mum amount of financial rewards requested (i.e.,
a reduction of a portion of monthly electricity
bill) for adopting each major DR behavior. Spe-
cifically, our analysis indicated that about 10% of
the participants said that they would do it even
without incentive to adopt the behavior of ad-
justing thermostat settings for 2-3 degrees in the
summer, while about 5% of the participants said
that they would not do it no matter how much
incentives were provided. Among all the DR
behaviors, people were more willing to accept
the 10-minute emergency shut-down than other
DR behaviors. Multinomial logistic regression
model was further used to identify the signifi-
cant predictors (α = 0.05) of each DR behavior.
Results indicate that dwelling size, attention to
utility bills, and comfort needs (both in summer
and winter) significantly predicted the incentive
amount requested to adjust A/C s ettings for 2-3
degree when someone at home.
A recent study with a representative sample of
1631 residents across 4 states -California, Texas,
Virginia, and Tennessee- was designed and
conducted by CURENT in 2016 to investigate 1)
whether consumers are willing to participate in
several important DR programs in order to re-
duce electricity consumption during peak hours
(e.g., 2-5 pm in the summer) including: installing
an automatic switcher to re-schedule A/C cy-
cling, installing an automatic thermostat control-
ler to tweak A/C settings, voluntarily reducing
A/C use during peak hours, and responding to
emergency alerts by adjusting A/C thermostat
settings; 2) how additional incentives, such as
a $30 reward, affect consumers’ willingness to
participate in those programs; and 3) how de-
mographic and social-psychological factors (e.g.,
environmental concern, bill consciousness, social
norms, and trust in the utility company) affecting
residents’ decisions to participate in popular DR
programs in the market.
.
This data showed that residents
differed in their preferences in each
of DR program across 4 states. For
example, residents in California and
Virginia felt more favorable about
voluntary thermal adjustment in
summer during peak hours than
those in Tennessee and Texas did,
χ2 (3) = 16.69, p < .001 (Fig. 2). In
addition, Virginia residents had
significantly less interest in DR alert
programs in winter, χ2 (3) = 16.12,
p < .001. Fig. 3 presents the signifi-
cant factors predicting willingness
to participate in two popular DR
programs in the market- install-
ing an A/C outdoor switcher in the
summer and installing of a thermo-
stat adjuster in the winter. Results
of the regression model suggested
that democrats were 55% more
likely to install the A/C outdoor
switcher than non-democrats, and
that people with a positive level of
social norms (i.e., perceiving signifi-
cant others as being supportive to
install the switcher) were 57% more
likely to install the switcher them-
selves than their counterparts.
Further, we have analyzed the
social-psychological and demo-
graphics factor affecting low-
income households’ willingness
to adopt the DR behaviors. Data
collected from the 354 LIHs sug-
gested that attitudes toward energy
savings, social norms, and perceived
behavior control were all positively
predictive of willingness to accept
voluntary demand reduction, while
comfort need was a negative pre-
dictor. Regarding the acceptance
of automaton, only attitudes, social
norms and environmental concern
were positive predictors. Addition-
ally, perceived risks to privacy was
negatively associated with the au-
tomation acceptance. Age, the only
significant demographic predictor,
was negatively related to the accep-
tance of automation.
~end~
Spring 2017
CURENT Newsletter
10