Analysis Not irrational but habitual: The importance of “behavioural lock-in” in energy consumption Kevin Maréchal ⁎ Centre for Economic and Social Studies on the Environment (CESSE), Université Libre de Bruxelles — Université d'Europe, 44, Avenue Jeanne CP124, 1050 Brussels, Belgium abstract article info Article history: Received 12 August 2009 Received in revised form 10 December 2009 Accepted 11 December 2009 Available online 12 January 2010 Keywords: Habits Energy consumption Behavioural lock-in Evolutionary economics Change of behaviour A substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits. The existence of habits — not fully conscious forms of behaviour — is important as it contradicts rational choice theory. Their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives. This is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon-based Socio-Technical System constrains and shapes consumers' choices through structural forces. Habits being potentially “counterintentional,” they may explain the “efficiency paradox” in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population. Policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits. For instance, targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed. The results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure. Our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions. This “unconsciousness” is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures. Given the other characteristics of habits, the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction “Most of the time what we do is what we do most of the time” (Townsend and Bever, 2001: 2). This often-quoted sentence within the realm of social psychology is meant to emphasize that much of our behaviour in daily life is characterised by repetition. From the empirical work of Wendy Wood and colleagues (Wood et al., 2002; Quinn and Wood, 2005), we know that many activities are not only repetitive in frequency but they also are performed in stable contexts. Such consistency sets a favourable breeding ground for habits (i.e. behavioural predisposition to repeat a well-practiced action given a context) to develop (Ouellette and Wood, 1998). Once formed in those circumstances of both high frequency and stability, habits then become a strong predictor of behaviour “over and above intentions, suggesting that such behaviour is initiated without much deliberation and thought” (Danner et al., 2008: 246). As already discussed in Maréchal (2009), the concept of habits is essential in analysing the determinants of domestic energy consump- tion as it sheds an insightful light on the puzzling question of why it keeps rising even though there is an evident increase of awareness and concern about energy-related environmental issues such as climate change. Indeed, if we subscribe to the idea that energy- consuming behaviours — such as switching off the lights, turning off appliances, etc. — are often guided by habits and that deeply ingrained habits can become counterintentional (Verplanken and Faes, 1999), it then follows that people may often display “locked-in” practices in their daily energy consumption behaviour. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to provide an illustration of the role played by habits in explaining the reduced effectiveness of traditional instruments such as incentives. More precisely, it will serve to underline the importance — for policy-makers — of specifically addressing the performance context of habits if they wish to reduce domestic energy consumption. It follows from the analysis performed in this paper that the features displayed by habits should be fully acknowledged and accounted for prior to designing measures aimed at reducing domestic energy consumption. This paper builds on an empirical analysis that consists of three sets of data. The first one comes from a questionnaire that was submitted to the visitors of the Brussels Motor Shows in the framework of a larger study on “clean vehicles” (Englert et al., 2009). This set is mainly used to illustrate the implications of the specific features displayed by habits such as their low degree of consciousness. The second set of data comes from a sociological study on energy behaviours in the framework of the Brussels Energy Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1104–1114 ⁎ Tel.: +32 2 650 3332; fax: +32 2 650 4691. E-mail address: kevin.marechal@ulb.ac.be. 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.12.004 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon