Innovations in Home Energy Use: A Sourcebook for Behavior Change (RTI Press Books)

This collection highlights innovations to encourage reduction in homeowner energy use. The ideas described grew out of a summit at Duke University that brought together people from research institutions, county sustainability offices, government agencies, consultant organizations, architecture firms, building contractors, and real estate agencies—sectors of professionals and practitioners who do not often converse.

The resulting book provides a foundation for new dialog about ways in which homeowners can be engaged as partners in the quest to reduce our collective energy use. It focuses on how to change individual behavior, which is a function of not only general attitudes, but also perceptions of social norms, specific skill knowledge, and available technology and tools. The essays in this book will appeal to a range of people charged with curbing residential energy use through communication-based intervention.

Editor Brian G. Southwell directs the Science in the Public Sphere program in the Center for Communication Science at RTI International and holds faculty appointments at Duke University and at UNC-Chapel Hill. At Duke, he advised Project LIT HoMES (Leveraging Individual Transitions into Homeownership to Motivate Energy Savings), which inspired this book. He is author of Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health: Sharing Disparities and hosts The Measure of Everyday Life on WNCU.