Context, control and the spillover of energy use behaviours between office and home settings

Abstract

This paper examines how office-based lighting and computer use behaviours relate to similar behaviours performed by the same individuals in a household setting. It contributes to the understanding of energy use behaviour in both household and organisational settings, and investigates the potential for the ‘spillover’ of behaviour from one context to another. A questionnaire survey was administered to office-based employees of two adjacent local government organisations (‘City Council’ and ‘County Council’) in the East Midlands region of the UK. The analysis demonstrates that the organisational or home setting is an important defining feature of the energy use behaviour. It also reveals that, while there were weak relationships across settings between behaviours sharing other taxonomic categories, such as equipment used and trigger for the behaviour, there was no evidence to support the existence of spillover effects across settings.