Search results

Energy conservation literacy within households is a contemporary and topical issue globally. However, scant research has been conducted on energy-saving literacy amongst Ghanaian households. To substantiate the problem, this paper aims to examine energy conservation literacy and behaviours among Ghanaian households in the Greater Accra Region.

The study assessed household electricity use and explored determinants of household energy conservation behaviours. Data was collected through a survey administered to households within the target region and analysed using descriptive statistics and Spearmen’s rank correlation.

Results showed electricity conservation among households is greatly influenced by the number of household occupants, household income levels, and the quality and quantity of appliances. The study also found that conservation behaviours are positively correlated to the number of occupants, household income levels, the quantity of electrical appliances, age of household members, number of rooms and level of urbanization within the home’s geographical region. Cumulatively, the findings suggest households held positive attitudes towards efficient energy practices. Enigmatically, the use of energy-conserving alternative technologies was not widely used by households; hence, this factor does not significantly affect household energy conservation.

Although limited to Ghana’s capital region, the findings can be used to inform policy and regulations at the regional and national levels in designing an efficient and effective mechanism to reduce the country’s overall energy use.

Premised upon the findings, the study recommends an intensification of education and awareness-creation on various energy-saving regulations and initiatives and thorough education on the usage of standardized (approved) refrigerators to promote the consistent adoption of energy conservation measures among households.

This study pioneers investigations into the influence of household demographic variables on overall electricity conservation behaviours exhibited by Ghanaian households

In residential buildings, personal choices influence electricity and water consumption. Prior studies indicate that information feedback can stimulate resource conservation. College dormitories provide an excellent venue for controlled study of the effects of feedback. The goal of this study is to assess how different resolutions of socio‐technical feedback, combined with incentives, encourage students to conserve resources.

An automated data monitoring system was developed that provided dormitory residents with real‐time web‐based feedback on energy and water use in two “high resolution” dormitories. In contrast, utility meters were manually read for 20 “low‐resolution” dormitories, and data were provided to residents once per week. For both groups, resource use was monitored during a baseline period and during a two week “dorm energy competition” during which feedback, education and conservation incentives were provided.

Overall, the introduction of feedback, education and incentives resulted in a 32 percent reduction in electricity use (amounting to savings of 68,300 kWh, $5,107 and 148,000 lbs of CO₋₂) but only a 3 percent reduction in water use. Dormitories that received high resolution feedback were more effective at conservation, reducing their electricity consumption by 55 percent compared to 31 percent for low resolution dormitories. In a post‐competition survey, students reported that they would continue conservation practices developed during the competition and that they would view web‐based real‐time data even in the absence of competition.

The results of this research provide evidence that real‐time resource feedback systems, when combined with education and an incentive, interest, motivate and empower college students to reduce resource use in dormitories.

This is the first study to report on the effects of providing college students with real‐time feedback on resource use. The authors of this study are currently engaged in further research to determine: whether reductions in consumption can be sustained over time with and without incentives; the degree to which feedback affect attitude; and the degree to which findings are transferable to apartments and other residential settings.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether, and how, electricity consumption by students in university residence halls were impacted through three intervention strategies.

The current investigation uses a quasi-experimental design by exposing freshman students in four matched residence halls and the use of three different interventions designed to encourage energy conservation, specifically electricity conservation. A control residence hall received no intervention. One residence hall had an energy dashboard prominently displayed. Another received various communications and programming designed to raise awareness of the need for energy conservation. A fourth residence hall had an energy dashboard and received programming. Electricity consumption among the residence halls was compared using multivariate analysis.

Students in all residence halls receiving interventions demonstrated significantly lower electricity consumption compared to the control residence hall. Across two years with different student populations, results were consistent: the residence hall receiving only the communications and programming, but not the dashboard, had the lowest electricity use. The residence hall with only the dashboard also demonstrated a significant but smaller decline in electricity use. Curiously, the residence hall wherein both interventions were used demonstrated the smallest decline in electricity use.

While total costs for the communications and programming are difficult to accurately assess, the results suggest that this approach is cost-effective when compared to the avoided cost of electricity and is superior in terms of electricity cost savings to both the dashboards and to the combined intervention. Results also suggest that any intervention is likely to induce a large enough electricity reduction to be cost-effective and there may be non-economic benefits as well.

This study takes advantage of the availability of four “matched” residence halls to approximate the rigor of a controlled quasi-experimental design to compare different strategies for inducing electricity consumption among freshman residents.

Understanding electricity use behaviour is considered one of the strategies to achieve sustained electricity management in buildings. The lack of understanding of occupants’ electricity use behaviour has been found to cause various environmental and ecological issues. This paper aims to investigate the factors influencing occupants’ inefficient use of electricity in buildings becomes a vital area of study to achieve maximum benefit in the area of electricity management.

The study adopted a quantitative survey and questionnaire as instruments for gathering relevant information from end-users in the study area, and the data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The major factors influencing the electricity use behaviour of students in the study area were attributed to their level of awareness, personal beliefs and attitude towards electricity, managerial influences and economic factors.

The threats to the environment and ecology necessitate immediate attention to the elements that impact students’ electricity use habits. This research explains the key elements that might impact students’ electricity consumption habits in buildings. Understanding these key characteristics will provide policymakers with vital knowledge of its prevalence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the focuses, motivations and challenges of achieving campus sustainability in Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs).

A multisite case study was conducted in Changchun City, Jilin, where eight HEIs of various types were examined. Structured interviews with school managers, students and government officials were accompanied with analysis of relevant documents.

The focuses of sustainability among the studied HEIs were on water and energy conservation and on non-technical initiatives. The focuses can be explained by motivations and challenges. The HEIs are motivated by government and financial pressures and face challenges in limited accessibility to funding. The reliance of non-technical initiatives has negatively impacted student welfare and has become unpopular among students.

The government is advised to increase funding to HEIs in relation to sustainability and to make the funding more equitable. The HEIs are advised to modify sustainability practices that severely affect the daily lives of students, to share the benefits of water and energy conservation with their students and to involve students in sustainability governance.

This paper adds to the existing literature in two ways. First, it expands the geographical reach of the literature to developing countries, in general, and to China, in particular. Second, it adopts the multisite case study research approach to study the whole spectrum of Chinese HEIs and highlights the differences among these HEIs when it comes to sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to test a new methodology for simulating shared electricity generation among small groups of neighbours with Ostrom’s (1994) principles of common pool resource (CPR) (human behaviour-based) efficiencies. The approach does not anticipate exclusive off-grid communities but instead, diverse energy users taking advantage of the averaging effects of aggregation, the social benefits of a CPR and direct action on emissions.

The study tested three groups of five adjacent − or same-building − neighbours for three months to measure how electricity demand (import) is affected by an in-home display issuing nudges and sanctions by the group around a simulated (limited capacity) shared solar and battery system. A control group of six homes’ energy data was obtained for the same period.

Two groups reduced their energy demand with weak but significant correlation between stimulus and reduced energy demand and one group increased demand. There were no significant effects in time-of-use behaviours.

The study shows that the interaction between consumers and energy systems can in this instance be simulated with inexpensive equipment. Studying dynamic interactions between people and systems provides new data where supply simulations have been one-sided. There is support in this work that the energy supply can be presented as a rivalrous commons system.

Urban adjacent neighbours (and apartment occupants in the same building or campus) exhibit emergent group behaviours around electricity use conservation and time-of-use. Managing energy demand is very difficult but very important for making consumer behaviour “fit” the future supply of energy which may be unreliable and limited.

There are likely social benefits and other overflow benefits when neighbours can share a critical resource. There are other critical services that may be managed according to the Ostrom commons principles. The sharing group will be more resilient in terms of electricity but also in terms of social capital.

The work builds on the work of Rachel Coxcoon and others who have identified that groups perform better at certain challenges than individuals do. This aligns with scale and operational efficiencies in shared renewable energy infrastructure. Shaping behaviour and the generation systems together for optimal outcomes is new work.

Archivists are charged with the preservation of their collections by reducing deterioration because of temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pollutants and other factors. The methods archivists use to preserve their collections may have a negative impact on the environment. This paper aims to identify factors for building environmentally sustainable archives to help guide archival environmental sustainability practices.

This paper identifies factors through a literature review, and conducts a content analysis of the websites of seven national/state archives. The analysis focuses on the policy statements of these archives.

The authors found that the literature lists 31 factors under 7 categories: electricity, facilities, water, exhibitions, pollution, collection practices and education and outreach. The content analysis of the policy documents or statements demonstrated that archives applied and addressed mostly “resource-related” efforts to protect the environment, such as factors related to electricity, facilities, water and pollution. However, factors related to “work-related” efforts, such as exhibitions, collection practices and education and outreach, were ignored.

This study can provide insights to archivists on current implementation and help to guide their further environmental sustainability practices.

Little is known regarding archivists’ implementation of environmentally sustainable practices. This study focuses on identifying factors for environmental sustainability of archives addressed by literature and existing archives, trying to find the gap between literature and practice.

The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effectiveness of sustainability information and strategies to change pro-environmental (pro-e) behavior with introductory environmental science laboratory students.

A one-group pretest posttest study was used to evaluate a two-hour workshop in which 30 participants were instructed in sustainability education and behavior change strategies. Participants implemented self-management strategies and tracked their energy use every week for two weeks following the pro-e training.

A significant difference between participants’ baseline and Week 2 energy use assessments was found. The results suggest that the pro-e training increased participants’ energy conservation behavior for their targeted device. Moreover, participants decreased their energy usage for other measured electronic devices, suggesting generalization of treatment effects.

A sizable savings in energy was realized across all participants and devices (approximately 300 hours). However, there was no control group in this one-group pretest posttest study and the effect of reactivity cannot be discounted.

This research suggests that behavior change strategies may be effective at improving pro-e behaviors. The relative ease and low cost of delivering the instruction, and minimal effort on the part of the participant to make behavior changes, provides a solid foundation from which to disseminate sustainability education.

This paper describes a preliminary evaluation of a behavior change approach to teach students about how to change their pro-e behaviors. Limited prior research has examined self-management to alter pro-e behavior.

This paper aims to examine Bangladesh's overall economy with special focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis, choosing right foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, remittance inflow, lessons from South East Asian nations, risk factors and aftermath.

Phenomenological research has raised awareness and increased insight into Bangladesh's overall strength, weakness, opportunity and threat in terms of her current position in world economy. The approach is based on observation of the business environment, online research, a close watch on Bangladesh's economy, analysis of newspapers, books, brainstorming with co‐researchers for five years and 30 years of living and working experience in developing countries.

The research has found that Bangladesh is going to encounter series of economic hurdles in near future. A SWOT analysis of Bangladesh has uncovered her overall strength, weakness, opportunity and threat in terms of her current position in world economy. Despite some strengths and opportunities, Bangladesh has lots of weaknesses and threats that could seriously undermine nation's development process at any time. A holistic and concerted effort is much sought after to address those problems while capitalising on strengths and opportunities. Side by side, Bangladesh should try her level best to attract quality FDI. However, remittance inflow plays very crucial role in Bangladesh's economy. But deplorably, since it is almost impossible to follow the successful model of South East Asian nations, Bangladesh does not have any sure success formula of any country in hand to follow. In fact, many less successful countries will have to struggle for long uncertain period. And sadly, Bangladesh falls into that category indeed. In fact, Bangladesh's economy has been on an inherently unstable path that can only end in tears. But remittance inflow will act as lifeblood for Bangladesh's economy and it will slow down the total apocalyptic process indeed. However, considering the totality, Bangladesh must have to face several critical challenges at once even before embarking on the track of vision 2020! Truly, nightmare is just on!

This paper offers a holistic view that would guide a reader to identify key challenges of a typical least developed country.

Despite the increasing number of studies investigating environmentally sustainable practices in different sectors, no research exists on the issues related to the success factors for implementing environmentally sustainable practices in the utilities sector. To partially fill this research gap, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine these success factors in a public utilities organization in the United Arab Emirates.

An integrated interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification approach was implemented to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) and to model and analyze the relationships among them.

Thirteen CSFs were identified and the relationships among them were represented by a seven-level hierarchical graphical model, and six CSFs were identified as drivers of success: government policies, regulations and environmental awareness programs; organization sustainability strategies; top management commitment; organizational capabilities; social and environmental responsibility; and eco-knowledge.

This is first kind of study to identify CSFs for implementing environmentally sustainable practices in the utilities sector. The results could guide government policymakers and decision-makers in utilities organizations that are interested in implementing environmentally sustainable practices.