Sociological Explanation of Factors Affecting Households Energy Consumption in Iran

Abstract

How energy is consumed as part of a lifestyle has attracted a lot of attention. Energy consumption, like other socio-economic phenomena, is influenced by various factors. The current paper aims at identifying the factors affecting the attitude towards households’ energy consumption in Iran (Mashhad). In recent decades, energy consumption has become one of the major urban issues with the growth of urban population, increasing. Mashhad is also one of the metropolises of Iran that according to statistics has a high consumption. Thus, the current paper was conducted quantitatively through a questionnaire with a sample of 540 households using cluster sampling method. The results showed that independent variables explained the variance of the dependent variable by 21.5%. Other results showed that the variables of religiosity, social inequality, environmental knowledge and social comparison directly affect household energy consumption and the variable of mass media use indirectly affected energy consumption by affecting social inequality.