Energy-efficiency and environmental attitude-behaviour gaps – Reconsidering institutional MIT vocabularies of motives (Ground Source Heat Pump Association Trade Conference)

Description

It is clear that there exists gap-type behaviours in technology (non-)adoption. ‘Energy efficiency’ and ‘environmental attitude-behaviour’ gaps are now a well-established research finding and demonstrate a puzzling disconnection. Consumers eschew persuasion techniques from firms expounding clear financial and or environmental benefits. Consumers underinvest in energy efficient technologies even when cost-benefit analyses show clear financial benefits. Institutional studies, however, have long recognised the bounded nature of decision-making where legitimacy is created, maintained and manipulated by expressions of motive which connect practice to wider systems of social control within markets, institutions and technologies (MIT). This presentation takes up this institutional puzzle, examining the MIT vocabularies of motives surrounding heat pump (non-) adoption. Therefore the aims of this presentation are to: (i) discuss the vocabularies of motives and legitimate claims in heat pump (non-) adoption; (ii) identify and discuss the ways that legitimacy is anchored institutionally in heat pump (non-) adoption practice. This presentation reconsiders some of the classic institutional behaviour studies against the historical practitioner advertisements on heat pump (non-) adoption. Lessons are drawn for trade GSHP practitioners.

Period	Jul 2023 → …
Held at	Ground Source Heat Pump Association
Degree of Recognition	National