Review on the Importance of Gender Perspective in Household Energy-Saving Behavior and Energy Transition for Sustainability

Energy-saving and efficiency represent a crucial role in achieving a clean environment as well as economic and social development, providing substantial benefits to stakeholders, including householders. Better cost savings can be achieved by simply changing behavior. However, real energy users lack proper technical energy knowledge, awareness, and education in most cases. In most countries, women are involved in a higher percentage of energy activities in household chores but have less gender participation in energy decisions. In this regard, a gender perspective effectively understands energy users’ pragmatic and strategic needs for energy-saving behavior improvement. Previous literature reviews have been focusing on specific aspects of energy sustainability; however, no review has focused on energy-saving from a gender perspective to the best of our knowledge. It aims to provide a systematic review of literature on energy-saving and management, highlighting the importance of gender roles and fulfilling the literature’s study gaps that provide future possible research streams. The review finds that females use lower energy than males in household activities that has supported in household energy-saving behavior. In addition, gender, income, family composition, ownership, and education are significant influencing factors in energy-saving behavior, and gender differences are rooted in socialization, responsibility, and choice of energy appliances that have impacted energy decisions influencing energy-saving behavior and sustainability goals.

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Assessment of Energy Use on Urban Kathmandu from Energy Cultures Framework in Gender Perspective

Journal of the Institute of Engineering ◽

10.3126/jie.v15i3.32211 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 308-316

Author(s):

Bindu Shrestha ◽

Sushil B Bajracharya ◽

Sudarshan R Tiwari

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Energy Saving ◽

Energy Use ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Gender Perspective ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Scant Attention ◽

Cleaner Technology ◽

Reduce Carbon Emission ◽

Women's Role

The urban household has a high potential for energy saving to reduce carbon emission; however, it has been scant attention in Nepalese energy policy. Though sustainable development has set 2030 goals to achieve high impact on energy with a focus on women’ role, Nepal is still lagged for effective participating women properly in the energy sector. Urban women have a triple role with significant responsibility for household chores, and efficient cooking is one of pertinent attitudes to reduce energy in Kathmandu. Household energy is highly influenced by human behavior, energy culture, and practices, more significant role for shifting technology, that has less consideration in the policy. This paper aims to assess the energy practices identifying trade-offs of an energy transition to cleaner technology from the questionnaire survey, observation, interviews, and quantitative analysis in terms of a gender perspective. The analysis is based on energy cultures framework in gender perspective with primary attributes of cognitive norms, energy practices, and material culture to understand urban Kathmandu neighborhood. The field study showed that urban households are suffered from energy inaccessibility, inequality, and insecurity resulting in fuel stacking, socio-economic disparity, and environmental impacts. In conclusion, the energy-saving and reduced carbon emissions can be solved through prioritizing women’s role as a change of agent with active participation, incentives, two-way communication, and awareness to improve the situation.

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Energy-saving behavior of Turkish women: A consumer survey on the use of home appliances

Energy & Environment ◽

10.1177/0958305x17729781 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 775-807 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Meltem Ucal

Keyword(s):

Energy Saving ◽

Logit Models ◽

Turkish Women ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Household Energy ◽

Attitudes And Behaviors ◽

Home Appliances ◽

Saving Behavior ◽

The Relationship

This paper focuses on energy-related attitudes and behaviors of Turkish women, who are the main users of electrical home appliances responsible for most household energy consumption. Answers from 1323 female respondents surveyed through a unique questionnaire formed the dataset. The results from analysis of variance show that education has a significant effect on the relationship between energy saving and awareness and attitudes about climate change. Significant differences also exist between education level groups in terms of knowledge of the classification of energy-saving electrical home appliances. Responses to questions related to energy-saving purchasing behaviors are consistently higher for knowledgeable respondents. The paper then uses factor analysis and ordinal logit models to reveal interactions between energy-saving behavior regarding electrical home appliances and several factors, namely awareness, sensitivity, essentials, and receptiveness. The identification of these factors can provide useful insights for policy makers that enable them to construct energy-saving policies specifically tailored toward women.

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Impact factors of household energy-saving behavior: An empirical study of Shandong Province in China

Journal of Cleaner Production ◽

10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.303 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 185 ◽

pp. 285-298 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Cheng-Yao Zhang ◽

Biying Yu ◽

Jin-Wei Wang ◽

Yi-Ming Wei

Keyword(s):

Empirical Study ◽

Energy Saving ◽

Shandong Province ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Household Energy ◽

Saving Behavior

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The determinants of household energy-saving behavior: Survey and comparison in five major Asian cities

Energy Policy ◽

10.1016/j.enpol.2012.09.043 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 52 ◽

pp. 354-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 94

Author(s):

Shiro Hori ◽

Kayoko Kondo ◽

Daisuke Nogata ◽

Han Ben

Keyword(s):

Energy Saving ◽

Household Energy ◽

Asian Cities ◽

Saving Behavior

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Exploring the “Energy-Saving Personality Traits” in the Office and Household Situation: An Empirical Study

Energies ◽

10.3390/en13143535 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (14) ◽

pp. 3535

Author(s):

Qian-Cheng Wang ◽

Yi-Xuan Wang ◽

Izzy Yi Jian ◽

Hsi-Hsien Wei ◽

Xuan Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Energy Conservation ◽

Personality Traits ◽

Energy Saving ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Environmental Behaviors ◽

Household Energy ◽

Household Situation ◽

Household Environment ◽

Saving Behavior

Behavior-driven energy conservation has been a promising strategy for reducing building energy consumption as well as carbon emissions. With the intention of revealing the impacts of an individual’s personality basis on energy conservation behavioral attitudes and intentions in households and offices, the present study proposes and conducts an experiment in Xi’an, China with two groups for the investigation of such attitudes towards household energy-saving behavior (HESB) and office energy-saving behavior (OESB), respectively. The research adopts structural equation modeling for experiment data analysis. The analysis results suggest that the two personality traits, Agreeableness and Neuroticism, are significantly related to both HESB and OESB attitudes. Especially, agreeable people tend to present stronger energy-saving attitudes, while individuals with higher Neuroticism are less likely to do so. The results indicate that the impacts of these two traits on energy-saving attitude are found to be less influenced by different environment settings. Further, the results find that Extraversion positively influences energy-saving attitude in the office environment, while Openness only significantly works in the household environment. It is hoped that the findings of the present study can provide informative references to energy-saving intervention design as well as further studies on the spillover of pro-environmental behaviors.

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Household Energy-Saving Behavior Questionnaire

PsycTESTS Dataset ◽

10.1037/t25062-000 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Dave Webb ◽

Geoffrey N. Soutar ◽

Tim Mazzarol ◽

Patricia Saldaris

Keyword(s):

Energy Saving ◽

Household Energy ◽

Saving Behavior

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Why Low-Carbon Publicity Effect Limits? The Role of Heterogeneous Intention in Reducing Household Energy Consumption

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14227634 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (22) ◽

pp. 7634

Author(s):

Jin Zhang ◽

Lianrui Ma ◽

Jinkai Li

Keyword(s):

Energy Consumption ◽

Energy Saving ◽

Energy Awareness ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Rapid Urbanization ◽

Household Energy ◽

Consumption Behavior ◽

Household Energy Consumption ◽

Energy Behavior ◽

Saving Behavior

Low-carbon knowledge is seen as having a key role in interfering with household energy consumption behaviors by wide consensus from political and academic areas. Whether low-carbon publicity will help to reduce household energy consumption is still in dispute. By constructing an integrated knowledge-intention-behavior model and using 1335 detailed survey questionnaires of household energy behavior in Henan Province, the central area in China, this paper finds that in the developing area low-carbon knowledge or publicity cannot positively impact household energy-saving behavior even if mediated by energy awareness and energy-saving attitudes. Low-carbon knowledge does improve energy-saving attitude and attitude does not decrease household energy consumption directly. Familiarity with particular energy-saving knowledge would decrease the household energy consumption but not significantly in the statistics. Path analysis unfolds the reason that the heterogeneous effects of purchase-based intention and habitual intention explain energy consumption behavior. Subgroup analysis supports those economic factors of income and energy prices play key roles in explaining such household energy consumption behavior in the rapid urbanization area. This paper gives new evidence on the residential energy-saving behavior intervention among developing areas.

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Moral Development: From Paradigms to Plurality

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Development ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190676049.013.1 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Lene Arnett Jensen

Keyword(s):

Moral Development ◽

Life Course ◽

Human Development ◽

Developmental Pathways ◽

Entire Life ◽

Literature Reviews ◽

Adolescents And Adults ◽

And Gender ◽

Gender Groups ◽

Diverse Groups

This chapter introduces The Oxford Handbook of Moral Development: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. The handbook provides a comprehensive, international, and up-to-date review of research on moral development, including moral motives and behaviors, ontogeny and developmental pathways, and contexts that children, adolescents, and adults experience with respect to morality. Across more than 40 chapters, experts from disciplines such as anthropology, education, human development, psychology, and sociology address moral development through the entire life course among diverse groups within and across countries. This chapter addresses how the chapters provide literature reviews that are inclusive of highly diverse theoretical and research foci, as well as of diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and gender groups. The aim of the handbook is to contribute to the revitalization and flourishing of the field of moral development.

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