Journal article
Home for the common future (HCF): the use of home-meanings to promote domestic energy retrofit
- Abstract:
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The promotion of energy retrofit to homeowners is an important policy strategy to reduce operational energy use in dwellings and mitigate climate change. Energy research and policy typically focus on the cognitive (logical) aspects to motivate retrofit decisions, such as savings on energy bills and health considerations. However, this focus appears to have neglected the emotional aspects of how homeowners themselves make sense of the potential benefits of low-carbon dwellings.
To encompass both the emotional and cognitive aspects of energy retrofit decisions, the authors developed a home-meanings framework around the concept of perezhivanie (emotional and cognitive experience). We backgrounded our theoretical construction by drawing upon current literature of home-meanings and empirical insights from: (i) eighteen case studies, in ten of which homeowners achieved significant carbon emission reductions through retrofit activities, while in eight they did not; (ii) a stakeholder workshop (n = 36), representing various actors interested to advance domestic energy retrofit activities in the UK, e.g. industry, government, academia, intermediaries.
We analysed the data to identify positive experiences associated with low-carbon dwellings. These experiences are organised in five themes: (i) control over one's environment; (ii) Health and well-being & Happiness in everyday life, (iii) Climate concerns & Caring identity, (iv) Financial considerations & Future-resilience; (v) a full integration between and individual and their environment. The authors developed a Home for the Common Future (HCF) heuristic, which captures three out of five identified themes (ii–iv). We suggest that the heuristic can be used for promoting the benefits of low-carbon dwellings.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1016/j.erss.2023.103358
Authors
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Journal:
- Energy Research and Social Science More from this journal
- Volume:
- 107
- Article number:
- 103358
- Publication date:
- 2023-12-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-11-21
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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2214-6296
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1586382
- Local pid:
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pubs:1586382
- Deposit date:
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2023-12-22
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Bobrova et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Notes:
- This research was funded in part by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) under the project Fast-tracking Low-Energy Use via Retrofit (FLEUR) [grant number: ES/V012606/1], as well as by the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), supported by UK Research and Innovation [grant number: EP/R035288/1]. For the purpose of Open Access, the first author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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