TY - JOUR
T1 - Thermostat wars? The roles of gender and thermal comfort negotiations in household energy use behavior
AU - Sintov, Nicole D.
AU - White, Lee V.
AU - Walpole, Hugh
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Sintov et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - Although advanced thermostat technologies offer energy efficiency potential, these devices alone do not guarantee savings. Household occupants often deviate from thermostat programs, perhaps due to differing thermal comfort preferences, which are strong drivers of residential energy use and vary across genders. This study aims to develop an initial typology of interpersonal interactions around thermal comfort, explore the role of gender in such interactions, and examine the impacts of interactions on thermostat adjustments. Using n = 1568 diary observations collected from 112 participants, we identify three interaction types: conflicts, compromises, and agreements. Fixed effects analyses find that women are marginally more likely to report engaging in conflicts, whereas men are significantly more likely to report engaging in agreements and compromises, both of which are associated with greater likelihood of adjusting thermostats within a given day. This work represents an early step in investigating the multiply determined nature of household energy decisions.
AB - Although advanced thermostat technologies offer energy efficiency potential, these devices alone do not guarantee savings. Household occupants often deviate from thermostat programs, perhaps due to differing thermal comfort preferences, which are strong drivers of residential energy use and vary across genders. This study aims to develop an initial typology of interpersonal interactions around thermal comfort, explore the role of gender in such interactions, and examine the impacts of interactions on thermostat adjustments. Using n = 1568 diary observations collected from 112 participants, we identify three interaction types: conflicts, compromises, and agreements. Fixed effects analyses find that women are marginally more likely to report engaging in conflicts, whereas men are significantly more likely to report engaging in agreements and compromises, both of which are associated with greater likelihood of adjusting thermostats within a given day. This work represents an early step in investigating the multiply determined nature of household energy decisions.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074936327&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0224198
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0224198
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 14
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 11
M1 - e0224198
ER -