Understanding willingness to accept energy-sufficiency behaviours

The project aims to understand public acceptance and willingness to adopt energy sufficiency behaviours (ESBs)—voluntary actions to reduce energy use without compromising quality of life. Using behavioural science approaches, it explores how framing ESBs in terms of gains (e.g., saving energy) versus losses (e.g., wasting energy) influences acceptance across key household energy domains: heating, lighting, mobility, leisure, and food. 

This cross-cultural project compares the UK and Germany, to assess how national context and cultural factors shape attitudes toward sufficiency. It also examines the role of environmental values, social norms, and perceived barriers or motivators in shaping willingness to adopt ESBs. 

The project is currently in its early implementation stage. Preparatory work is underway to identify relevant sufficiency behaviours and to design the household survey.  

The project aims to: 

• Identify and assess household energy sufficiency behaviours (ESBs) across heating, lighting, mobility, leisure, and food domains. 

• It explores how gain- and loss-framed messaging influences willingness to adopt ESBs. 

• Examines the role of environmental values, social norms, and perceived barriers. 

• To explore a cross-cultural comparison between the UK and Germany, enhancing understanding of contextual and cultural influences on energy sufficiency acceptance. 

This cross-cultural online survey will include 1,000 adults in each country (UK and Germany; N=2,000). It will measure attitudes, willingness to adopt energy sufficiency behaviours, environmental values, social norms, self-reported barriers and motivations, and socio-demographics. A Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) design will expose participants to vignettes illustrating sufficiency behaviours, framed in terms of gains or losses. After viewing each vignette, participants will report their willingness to adopt the behaviour and identify perceived motivators and barriers. 

As the project is in its early stages, data collection has not yet begun. However, it is expected that gain-framed messages (e.g., saving money) will increase willingness to adopt energy sufficiency behaviours compared to loss-framed messages (e.g., wasting  money). We also anticipate cross-cultural differences, with contextual factors such as national policies, social norms, and environmental values influencing acceptance. Findings will inform strategies to promote voluntary energy demand reduction and guide future behaviour-focused policy design. 

Future work should expand to explore the long-term effectiveness of framing strategies through experimental interventions and stakeholder collaboration. Identified research gaps include understanding how socio-cultural factors shape sustained sufficiency behaviours and how policy communication can better support voluntary energy demand reduction across diverse household contexts.