The 2016 WEI International Academic Conference Proceedings Barcelona, Spain The West East Institute 105 THE ROLE OF CULTURAL IDENTITY ON ENERGY SAVING BEHAVIOR Umut Kubat Yıldırım Beyazıt University Ankara, Turkey Zeynep Gürhan-Canli Koç University, İstanbul, Turkey Abstract Due to environmental problems such as global warming and decrease in energy sources, protection of environment and natural balance has become one of the agenda items of the public opinion. Energy saving is one of the most important strategies of environmental protection. As energy saving is one of the cheapest and effective ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, there are conscious efforts to increase energy savings and to use it efficiently. A considerable amount of energy use is actualized by households. Therefore, it is important for individuals to reevaluate their life styles and their consumption behavior in a manner to increase energy saving. It is required to evaluate individual level variables to make people save energy or use it in an efficient way. One of these variables is “identity.” In this research, the effects of “global” and “local” identities on two different types of energy saving behavior: saving and efficiency, are examined. In addition, the mediating roles of personal and social norms in the relations between global-local identities and energy saving behavior are investigated. Keywords: Global Identity, Local Identity, Norms, Energy Saving Behavior Introduction As energy saving is one of the most important strategies to protect the environment and one of the cheapest ways to reduce carbon dioxide emission (Han et al. 2013), there are conscious efforts to realize in energy savings (Biesiot and Noorman 1999). Many studies have examined intervention strategies for encouraging household energy saving behavior, such as information provision, public campaigns, goal setting, feedback, comparative feedback, and reward (Winett et al. 1978; Becker 1978; Midden et al. 1983; Brandon and Lewis 1999; Abrahamse and Steg 2009; Abrahamse et al., 2007; Petersen et al., 2007; Allcott, 2011). If the aim of interventio ns is to reduce households’ energy consumption patterns, it is necessary to consider individual level variables (Abrahamse et al. 2005). In some studies, energy use has been linked to individual variables, such as attitudes (Becker et al. 1981). While it may seem intuitive that environmental conservation behavior will follow from pro-environmental attitudes, and intentions, this has not seemed to be the case in many empirical studies (e.g. Constanzo et al. 1986; Kantola et al. 1984) and commonly assumed attitude–behavior models such as Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen 1991), Motivation Opportunity Ability (Ölander and Thogersen 1995), or Norm Activation Model (Schwartz 1977) are not sufficient to predict pro-environmental behavior. This discrepancy between attitude and behavior is referred to as the attitude behavior split/gap (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Bell 2009). Therefore, we need to employ a more advanced model if we are to predict people’s behavior from attitudes or intentions. Regarding environmental or saving behavior, several factors have been shown to moderate and mediate the gap between a resolution and its realization such as economic factors (Steg, 2008), habits (Loibl, Kraybill, and DeMay 2011), perceived behavioral control (Richetin et al., 2011), but the role of identity has not been quite investigated. To facilitate the ‘interest-to-action’ conversion in energy saving behavior, we propose that identity (i.e. cultural) will influence actual behavior. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the role of identity, specifically global- local identity in filling the gap between environmental knowledge, attitudes and environmental behavior.