Voluntary energy conservation through neighborhood programs: design and evaluation

General information and education programs have repeatedly been found to be rather ineffective in promoting intentional social change, such as household energy conservation practices. People do tend to be receptive to new ideas that reach them through personal contacts, however. A household energy-conservation program was therefore designed around a set of neighborhood-based activities in Seattle and tested in a field experiment. Persons exposed to this program did not alter their attitudes to become more favorable toward energy conservation, but they did take significantly more household conservation actions than persons not exposed to the program, and they reduced their household energy use approximately 8% below predicted consumption levels. An appendix outlines the six steps used to control for the effects of weather and to predict consumption levels without conservation actions. 19 references, 5 figures.