The influence of disruptive events on energy-related household practices: Results of a longitudinal study in the Netherlands

Abstract

Household energy use relates to our socio-cultural identity, our socio-economic status and the socio-cultural and material contexts in which we live. Around the world, households experienced dramatic changes in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the drastic increase of energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Habits and routines were disrupted, reinterpreted, reorganized and renegotiated, albeit under constraints and in most cases involuntarily. This paper analyses how the practice of ‘keeping warm’ responds to disruptive events ranging from a small-scale and short-lived experiment to much more drastic and far-reaching geopolitical events. Following an initial study challenging households to reduce temperatures inside their homes during October/November 2018, the same households were revisited for follow-up questioning two and a half years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and six months after the attack of Russian armed forces on Ukraine. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected before, during, and three months as well as three years after the original ‘heating challenge’. The final follow-up survey took place in August 2022 and turned the initial short-lived Living Lab-based experiment into a longitudinal study.

The experimental exploration of possibilities to reduce household energy use through the disruption of routinized practices in Living Labs enables an analysis of the effects of disruptive events, including the role of values, social norms, habits and routines (Sahakian et al., 2021). But what happens, when experiments get serious and large-scale upheaval affecting many challenges and changes meanings, thus contributing to changes in social norms and practices? This research explores lasting-changes in energy-related household practices following voluntary disruptive experimentation and subsequent involuntary disruptions. Compared to the macro-systemic disruptions experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and the more recent energy crisis, the disruptions induced through the initial ‘heating challenge’ are of a much smaller magnitude. Our findings show that reductions in energy use are possible when routinized practices are disrupted through voluntary experimentation. In addition, our results indicate that the meanings tied up with indoor comfort had changed due to the initial experiment and that participants who initially experimented in an interactive community setting had learned more about how to connect, share experiences and reflections to adapt to other, also large-scale disruptions collaboratively.