Why the social context of consumption matters. The cases of light bulbs and passenger cars suggest that successful diffusion of eco-innovation relates considerably to the consumer perspective or rather the heterogeneity of consumers (sub-frames), business perspectives and regulation. Therefore, we need to examine the social context of consumption, how consumers act in their environments and how their behaviour interacts with artefacts and physical infrastructures to trigger and shape resource flows. Luzenhiser (1993) provides a thorough review of social and behavioural aspects of energy use. He stresses that the role of human social behaviour has been largely overlooked, both in economic approaches (‘economic rationality’) and psychological approaches (‘attitude change’) to energy use. Efforts in the economic strand have focused almost entirely on the physical characteristics of buildings and appliances, and on the aggregate effects of rising energy prices. The behaviour of the human "occupants" of buildings is seen as secondary. By assuming human behaviour to be a relatively insignificant aspect of consumption these models overlook the central role of human action in shaping energy use. The variability in residential consumption reported in the literature, however, suggests that there is hardly a "typical" level of consumption for any energy end-use. Utility billing records, for example, show considerable variation in energy use among customer accounts -even when they live in same type of house and concern demographically similar families. Xxxxx & Xxxxxxx (1984) observe that ‘tremendous variation … exists in the needs and practices of energy users, so that analyses based on an average situation are likely to be wrong in many or most particular cases’ (Xxxxx & Xxxxxxx, p.182). This suggests that certain efficiency solutions may be more appropriate in some settings than in others. Explanations that take into account behavioural differences between households are clearly required. Psychological approaches have mainly been based on the simple Xxxxxxxx-Ajzen model that explains behaviour on the basis of attitudes, later also on subjective norms and behavioural control. Studies have reported significant relationships between attitudes and subsequent conservation action (Xxxxxx et al.
