Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss Review Household energy literacy: A critical review and a conceptual typology Karlijn L. van den Broek a,b, ⁎ a University of Heidelberg, Research Centre for Environmental Economics, Bergheimerstrasse 20, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany b University of Heidelberg, Department of Psychology, Hauptstraße 47-51, 69117, Heidelberg, Germany ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Energy literacy Energy conservation Energy perceptions Energy education ABSTRACT The concept of energy literacy is increasingly receiving more research attention within the fields of education, economics and psychology. A wide variety of definitions and approaches characterise the energy literacy lit- erature, making comparisons and generalizability of the findings problematic. This paper aims to review and organise the energy literacy literate that focus on the understanding of domestic electricity and gas use, by providing a framework for categorisation of the different conceptual and methodological approaches. Four types of household energy literacy are distinguished based on the existing literature: 1) device energy literacy, 2) action energy literacy, 3) financial energy literacy and 4) multifaceted energy literacy. The literature on each type of energy literacy is critically reviewed, focusing on the level of household energy literacy, its predictors and its relation to energy use. We call for more common principles and measures within the energy literacy research to allow for direct comparisons and longitudinal research on household energy literacy. This would greatly improve the quality and impact of the research, which in turn will help policy makers to decide how to address (which type of) energy literacy to facilitate domestic energy conservation. 1. Introduction Householders say that saving energy is the most important strategy to reduce their impact on environmental problems [1], but do they know how to do this effectively? Studies have found that people do not currently save energy efficiently in their home [2,3], nor do they choose to purchase the most energy-efficient (or cost-effective) appliance, also called the energy efficiency gap [4]. To understand this apparent con- tradiction, research is increasingly investigating householders percep- tions of energy use (e.g. [5]), including people’s energy literacy, or people’s understanding of domestic energy use. The concept of energy literacy has been gaining research attention in a number of fields (e.g. education, economics, psychology) and ap- plications (e.g. appliances, energy consumption, energy saving, effi- ciency investments), resulting in the use of the same term to refer to different concepts. This means that within the literature different re- quirements are set to classify a person as ‘energy literate’. An energy literate person can be someone who knows the energy consumption of their domestic appliances, knows with what actions they can save en- ergy in their home, knows how to make economic energy efficient decisions or knows about the relation between energy use and climate change. Hence, an individual can be energy literate according to one definition of energy literacy, but not according to a different conceptualisation of energy literacy. It is therefore not surprising, that the level of energy literacy remains unclear, as well as which type of individual differences are associated with higher energy literacy, or, perhaps most importantly, whether energy literate people are better at saving energy. Hence, a common approach in terms of operationalisa- tion and measures is needed to allow for comparison across studies. A first step towards such a standardised approach, is a categorization of the current approaches to energy literacy in the literature. This paper therefore aims to provide an overview of the different types of energy literacy in the literature by proposing a typology of energy literacy. We have used an inductive approach for developing this energy literacy framework, meaning the categories are based on the existing energy literacy literature rather than a framework that was constructed a priori. Although the latter approach would facilitate the development of a unifying theoretical framework, covering all potential types of knowledge and domains, such a framework would is unlikely to allow for unambiguous categorization of the literature and would therefore heavily limit the conclusions that can be drawn from this review. Instead, a framework based on the existing energy literacy lit- erature was expected to be more valuable because it provides an overview of how the literature currently conceptualizes energy literacy, and what conclusions the literature draws for each type of energy lit- eracy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101256 Received 8 April 2019; Received in revised form 2 August 2019; Accepted 9 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: University of Heidelberg, Research Centre for Environmental Economics, Bergheimerstrasse 20, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany. E-mail address: Karlijn.vandenbroek@awi.uni-heidelberg.de. Energy Research & Social Science 57 (2019) 101256 2214-6296/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T