Study On Urban Residential Energy Consumption Behavior

Energy has great impact on national economic development and people's life. With the social advance and economic continuous development, energy problem has more and more attracted extensive attention worldwide. In recent years residential energy consumption in our country has increased rapidly and become a key growth point for energy consumption. Now China is in the social transition period, when the changes of urban and rural structure and residential consumption structure have an important influence on the future energy consumption and environmental protection. To meet these challenges, residential energy consumption should be guided scientifically. The past studies in this field always focused on government behavior or conservation by technologies, while ignored the principal part of residents on the issue of energy consumption. In addition, for the diversity of study fields and perspectives, the recent studies on residential energy consumption behavior are not in-depth and domestic studies are absent.With the background, three research goals are set up, (1) to screen out and categorize urban residential energy consumption behavior and its influencing factors; (2) to confirm the impact and function of various factors on urban residential energy consumption behavior; (3) to validate the moderating effect of situational structure factors on the relation of individual characteristics factors and energy consumption behaviors. These three goals gradually resolve the functioning mechanism of various influencing factors on energy consumption behavior and build up the model of urban residential energy consumption behavior, and consequently provide reference for correlated governmental departments making polices and regulations to promote residents to lower energy consumption and reduce pollutants.The dissertation classifies Chinese residential energy consumption behavior into two categories, selective energy consumption behavior and habitual energy consumption behavior. Selective energy consumption behavior includes home energy behavior, public energy behavior and transportation energy behavior. From individual, family and situation three levels, the influencing factors are concluded into individual characteristics factors, life style factors and situational structure factors. With Dalian as example and urban residents in Dalian as study object, the study constructs research framework and obtain data by literature review, interview and questionnaire survey. There are three principal conclusions:(1)different kinds of habitual energy consumption behavior and selective energy consumption behavior have different influencing factors; concern, responsibility, knowledge and ecological centric value relate with three kinds of habitual energy consumption behavior; habitual mentality of life style factors relate with none of three kinds of habitual energy consumption behavior; responsibility, knowledge and economic centric value of individual characteristics factors relate with four kinds of selective energy consumption behavior; family structure of life style factors relates with four kinds of selective energy consumption behavior; and policy and regulation of situational structure factors relates with neither of habitual or selective energy consumption behavior.(2) Individual characteristics factors have the strongest predicting power for habitual energy consumption behavior; while situational structure factors have the strongest predicting power for selective energy consumption behavior.(3) Situational structure factors are both the influencing factors of energy consumption behavior and the moderator for the relation of individual characteristics factors and energy consumption behaviors. For habitual energy consumption behavior, it is the most important moderator that if it is convenient and saving-time as behaving; while for selective energy consumption behavior, the effect of education and social norms is the most important moderator. At the same time, the moderating effect of education and social norms works on both two categories of behaviors.The theoretical contributions of the dissertation lie in the following findings, firstly developing local measurement scales so to resolve the shortage of studies in this field and local measuring tools in China; secondly with both micro and macro perspectives drawing advantages from social psychology and sociology to conclude the influencing factors assembly of urban residential energy consumption behavior; thirdly constructing the model of energy consumption behavior to analyze deeply the behavior's formation mechanism, which helps the transition from fundamental study findings into applicable instructions for policy making.The practical values are to point out it is urgent to come out with specific guiding policies as finding out the lack of guiding policies for urban residential energy consumption behavior in China; to testify the important impact of knowledge, responsibility, values and education and norms on various energy consumption behaviors, and further propose that by education and promotion to build up positive citizen responsibility and values and form proper social norms; to testify the significant influence of factors from family level on residential energy consumption behavior, and consequently indicate paying attention to the impact of family, advocating green family and cultivating life style and habits of energy conservation; otherwise, prove the significant meaning of creating favorable situation for residents doing energy consumption behavior.