Psychology
In delivering a project that maximises the energy efficiency benefits of retrofit, it is vital to understand, engage and empower the individuals, households, and communities involved.
Members
- Dr. Thomas Webb (lead)
- Dr. Chris Jones (lead)
- Fiona Scott
As part of the BEU project, the team of academics from the School of Psychology is working on identifying the best way to engage communities with different behaviours and technical understanding.
This will be done by collecting, analysing and presenting information in a format relevant to the communities involved will maximise the understanding, engagement with the project and encouraging energy efficient behavioural change.
The team will carry out surveys of individual householders to understand how people living in the target communities think about energy efficiency interventions. They will also be implemented through a series of focus groups with residents which will be compared to other local/national initiatives.
This will be followed by a survey, building on the ideas and themes from the focus groups, but across a larger sample of residents. This allows key personality characteristics to be considered, helping to understand of how preferences for different forms of energy-use information differ between individuals.
This extensive consultation process will help identify best practice in empowering communities to develop their own energy-reduction activities and will establish a dialogue within the community itself around key topics such as environmental issues and climate change.