Research Article A Statistical Mechanics Approach to the Study of Energy Use Behaviour Godwin Osabutey , 1 Alex Akwasi Opoku , 1 and Samuel Gyamfi 2 1 Mathematics and Statistics Department, University of Energy and Natural Resources, P. O. Box 214, Sunyani, Ghana 2 Energy and Engineering Department, University of Energy and Natural Resources, P. O. Box 214, Sunyani, Ghana Correspondence should be addressed to Alex Akwasi Opoku; alex.opoku@uenr.edu.gh Received 12 November 2019; Accepted 23 March 2020; Published 1 May 2020 Academic Editor: Abdel-Maksoud A. Soliman Copyright © 2020 Godwin Osabutey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper proposes a statistical mechanical model for the energy conservation behaviour of energy users. The model was inspired by the multipopulation Curie-Weiss model and the discrete choice with social interaction model. We demonstrate that the model integrates the sociopsychological, the economic, and the energy technologist viewpoints to energy management, allowing us to subject these perspectives to an empirical study. 1. Introduction Energy is one of the most important drivers of the economy of every country. Often, managing the energy resources has been a problem. Electrical energy plays an indispensable role in undertaking most of our daily activities from refrigeration, cooking, lighting, entertaining to powering of machines and record keeping in the industrial and commercial sectors [1]. Electrical energy serves as a crucial resource for productive and quality education, efficient healthcare delivery, transpor- tation systems, and the exploration of minerals such as iron and gold. These serve as the building block on which every sector of a nation’s economy thrives for development [1]. The efficient use of resources available at a given time by the energy end users has also been a challenge. The demand for energy around the world keeps on increasing, and the existing traditional forms of energy such as the fossil fuels and coal, which are not renewable sources of energy, are struggling to keep up with this demand over time. Moreover, the regular usage of the fossil fuels has a negative impact on global warming and the ecosystem. Adaptation of a better and dynamic demand response program which promotes energy conservation practices among energy users is highly sought after now than ever. Economic-engineering studies have attempted to close this gap in energy efficiency through the adoption of different technologies [2]. A model that can simultaneously capture group dynamics, body use, cognitive processes, and human-machine interactions is needed. To date, progress towards such a model has been limited by the theoretical preferences of the various disciplines involved in energy research [2]. The main interest here is to import ideas from discrete choice theory and statistical physics to develop models for energy conservation decision-making. Here, our focus is on a model that captures how individuals’ decision about energy conservation is influenced by their socioeconomic attributes and the choices of others. This work is structured as follows: Section 2 gives an overview of existing models and theories in relation to human behaviour and energy use. In Section 3, we propose a model from discrete choice theory as a model for interdependent energy conservation decision-making. Sec- tion 4 discusses a more generalised form and multipopula- tion version of the Curie-Weiss model and provides an estimation procedure suitable for the model. Conclusion of the work is found in Section 5. 2. Modelling of Energy Use Behaviour Modelling of individual behaviour has always been a chal- lenge in the context of energy conservation. There are various Hindawi Journal of Applied Mathematics Volume 2020, Article ID 7384053, 14 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/7384053