Energy Transitions and Social Psychology

A Sociotechnical Perspective

Paul Upham, Paula Bögel, Katinka Johansen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429858376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy Industry

This book explains how social psychological concepts can be closely integrated with sociotechnical perspectives of energy transitions. It shows the value of actor-centred analysis that acknowledges the role of individual-level processes within their wider contexts of energy supply and use. In this way, the book connects social psychological and sociological frames of analysis, preserving the value of both, to provide multi-level, analytically extended accounts of energy transitions processes.

Sociotechnical thinking is about the interactions of people and technology, including the rules, regulations and institutions involved. Such perspectives help to identify the many forms of path dependency that can make change difficult. Human behaviour plays a strong role in maintaining these path dependencies, but it can also introduce change. This book advocates a deliberately interdisciplinary research agenda that recognises the value of social psychological perspectives when seeking to create new pathways for energy supply and use. At the same time, it also demonstrates the value of sociotechnical perspectives for energy-related social psychology.

Energy Transitions and Social Psychology will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy transitions, environmental and energy psychology, sustainable development and innovation studies, as well as students and scholars of environment and energy more generally.

Part I

Rationale

1 Introduction

Scope and purpose of the book

Decarbonising energy systems, while at the same time ensuring stable, sustainable and affordable energy supplies, is likely to have major ramifications for the publics¹ who are asked to accept these new energy infrastructures and technologies. In a future with more energy storage and intermittent renewable supply, publics are also likely to be nudged towards accepting some degree of change in their energy consumption patterns (Jacobsson and Johnson 2000). Hence public opinion and practices have become matters of importance for governments, the energy industry and academics alike (Devine-Wright 2009; van der Horst and Toke 2010). In particular, the way in which some renewable (and non-renewable) energy infrastructure projects have faced opposition from the local communities where they are constructed, while others have not (Toke 2005), has contributed to the growing interest in understanding the factors that drive public reactions to energy technology projects. Indeed, it would be fair to say that “social acceptance” of energy technologies has become one among many policy relevant social science concepts in the field of energy transition studies (Sovacool 2014).

The main aim of this short book is to show how concepts that help to explain individual-level psychology can be integrated with sociotechnical transitions theory, with a particular focus on energy. The focus here on integration is a more specific and challenging aim than simply showing the relevance of psychology in this context. Sociotechnical transitions theory – which we explain in more depth below – is most often framed in terms of different collectives of system actors, rather than in terms of individual people. Hence, the literature deals with the roles of firms, agencies, organisations as intermediaries, institutions and, less commonly, with entrepreneurs (policy, for profit and non-profit). Moreover, the sociotechnical transitions literature also seeks to generalise from individual cases, to suggest system-level patterns based on observation of the past, which can inform measures to accelerate energy and other transitions in the future.

All of this mitigates against – and is distinct from – analysis of intra-individual and social psychological processes (see Box 1.1 for an introduction to social psychology). Nonetheless, here we want to show why (social) psychological processes are important for transitions and how these individual-level processes can be analysed in relation to sociotechnical frameworks. While it is arguably straightforward to show the relevance of psychology to sociotechnical change in energy systems via the logical connection of ideas – for example, to show that consumer or citizen psychology has implications for technology use or acceptance and hence for system change – it requires more consideration to find psychological concepts that span individual and social levels, and to find theoretical approaches and methods that support such integration. In this book we use the terms ‘social psychology’ and ‘psychology’ interchangeably for brevity.

Box 1.1 Social psychology

In 1954, Gordon Allport defined social psychology as “the scientific attempt to explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings” (Allport 1954, p. 5). Social psychology is thus a broad research domain covering multiple research topics. Overall, social psychologists are concerned with individual behaviours. Although they are specifically concerned with the behaviour of individuals in a broader social context, that context is often narrowed down to a number of specific terms (indeed, we might sometimes say overly-specific).

Here, thoughts refer to the beliefs or expectations that people/actors may have vis-à-vis particular phenomena in the world; feelings refer to the broad range of emotional reactions, moods and motivations that people experience; and behaviours refer to observable actions, i.e. the ‘things’ that we see people doing. Overall, social psychologists share an interest in groups and societies, but their focus is on the individuals that are a part of those groups or societies. Social psychologists seek an understanding of individual persons; uncovering what they care about, how they operate, what their motivations are, and social psychologists do so with the aim of understanding how these individuals navigate their social environments. Of key importance is how people and groups both influence and are influenced by other human beings.

Social psychologists investigate a range of human experiences, for example: intrapersonal phenomena (occurring within the self or in the mind), such as cognition, perception, self-concepts and the behaviours we enact, and interpersonal phenomena (occurring between people), such as social influence and group dynamics. For example, the way we feel about ourselves, e.g. our self-esteem, may mirror how we fit into particular social groups in our social environment. And the way we see and perceive the world, e.g. the way we see other people or peoples, is greatly shaped by influence and persuasion from our peers and the multiple other sources of information we are subjected to in our lives. Thus, our being in the world is highly social, and it is precisely this social psychological material that is the core interest of social psychologists.

Historically, sociology and psychology have been closely related, with social psychology to some extent linking the two disciplines. While sociology and psychology have become progressively more specialised as disciplines, arguably social psychology in general still does cover some common ground between the two. Reflecting the broad nature of social psychology, multiple types of research methods, addressing the very different types of research inquiry within the field, have been used. Social psychology is an empirical science in that it investigates and reasons from observable phenomena to find answers regarding human behaviours. Diverse methods and research designs are used, from strictly controlled psychological experimental studies to correlational studies, where statistical methods are used to identify contribution to variance, to more qualitative and observational methods. While quantitative methods have perhaps dominated in sustainability-related psychological research, observational and case-based qualitative methods also provide data that can be readily integrated into the types of case-based research design historically favoured in sociotechnical transitions studies.

In summary: for its vast and very diverse array of past and potential future research topics, social psychology may be commonly described as attentive towards the social components of individual behaviours. Social psychology is an empirical science; it is about individual people; it deals with our thoughts, feelings and behaviours; it uses and infers from many types of data; and it does so mindful of how all of these phenomena are shaped by the social world around us (Ross et al. 2010; Stangor 2014).

For these reasons, while we have tried to write this book in an accessible style, it is somewhat theoretical in its leaning, partly because it addresses some of the issues that underlie the relative absence of psychology in the energy-oriented sociotechnical transitions literature. That said, we hope the book is still comprehensible by students at different levels, even if some of the issues discussed in Part I may be beyond what they need to deal with.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I deals with the somewhat abstract issues of bridging ontological and disciplinary differences in studies of human behaviour in relation to energy transitions. Here, we set out an integrative approach to connecting the psychological with the socio-technical. We also define various terms and perspectives that may be unfamiliar to some readers. Part II illustrates how close connections between psychological and sociotechnical concepts can be made in the context of energy transitions, despite differing underlying ontologies. As we expect that there will also be interest in the more general relevance of psychology to energy transitions, in Chapter 9 we set out a number of possibilities and research directions, while leaving more in-depth investigation of connections to systems-level transitions processes for future work.

Sociotechnical transitions perspectives on unsustainability

In this book we emphasise sociotechnical perspectives on energy transitions. These perspectives seek to integrate a wide range of relevant factors with broad, system-level descriptions. What they lose in terms of detail, they gain in breadth of application. Moreover, these perspectives arguably capture much of our current, problematic situation. Despite progress in raising standards of living and quality of life for many, at a global level we are continuing on unsustainable pathways and are far from achieving inter- and intra-generationally equitable development (Rockstrom 2009; Figueres et al. 2017). Globally, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase; biodiversity loss accelerates; global poverty reduction fails to meet United Nations goals; social inequality is intensifying and economic instability threatens societal cohesion and political stability (Heinrichs et al. 2015). While sustainability awareness grows internationally, as reflected in global policy initiatives such as the 2030 Agenda (United Nations General Assembly 2015) and the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015), the combined actions of states, companies and civil society around the world that are intended to be mitigative have not – as yet – reversed the unsustainable dynamics of contemporary systems of global production and consumption of all commodities at a global net level.

Why is this? From a sociotechnical transitions perspective, technological development, science, industry, markets, policy and culture are intertwined, co-evolving in a complex system of mutual and often self-reinforcing and supporting interactions (Kemp et al. 1998; Geels and Schot 2007). Successful intervention requires an understanding and anticipation of the connections and, hence, possible consequences. Moreover, successful intervention is inherently political (Smith et al. 2005): what constitutes success for one set of interests often implies loss for another. Indeed, despite the systems and managerial discourse of ‘transition management’ – i.e. the attempt to deliberately intervene and to steer transition processes – such practice is inherently political and seeks to change various forms of power (Avelino and Rotmans 2009).

Most sociotechnical transitions theorists study historical and contemporary cases of co-evolving social and technological change and stasis in the search for ways of accelerating and managing sociotechnical trajectories that are more sustainable, with particular attention given to describing and explaining change and resistance to change (Ulli-beer 2013). One of the most commonly-used conceptual models of sociotechnical systems is Geels’ (2002) multi-level perspective (MLP). This model proposes that sociotechnical systems can be usefully analysed according to three different levels of practice: the niche, regime and landscape (Geels 2002), as explained in Box 1.2. Understanding regime-level dynamics has proved to be particularly important when it comes to understanding the lack of change and resistance to change in established sociotechnical systems (Geels 2014). We will refer to the MLP heuristic or framework frequently during the course of the book.

Box 1.2 The multi-level perspective

Energy-focused, sociotechnical sustainability transition studies have focused on pathways and processes that help to explain interconnected social and energy technology change processes, from the development to the deployment stage. For this purpose, the multi-level perspective (MLP) has proved to be a popular framework (Geels 2002, 2011; Schot and Geels 2008).

As stated above, the MLP assumes three structural levels of analysis: the landscape, the regime and the niche (Geels 2002; Geels and Schot 2007). Niche innovations are bottom-up phenomena; niches are protected spaces allowing for the experimentation with emergent technologies, user practices and regulatory structures (Kemp et al. 1998; Schot and Geels 2008). The regime is the dominant set of ideas and ways of doing things, which are institutionalised in all senses. At the regime level, strong cultural influences and the effects of macro-political dynamics and economics lead to and reflect relative stability and often resistance to change that threatens established interests. Here, economic actors respond to the market signals operating within the technological paradigms or regimes (Van den Belt and Rip 1987; Van Den Ende and Kemp 1999). The regime includes meso-level dominant technologies, institutions, practices and rules. Regime level dynamics have proved to be important for understanding the lack of change and/or resistance to change in established sociotechnical systems.

The landscape is theoretically located at the macro-level of this three-level view of the world. It responds to and consists of multiple processes, including political, economic, social demographic and cultural, but it is above all a ‘place’ of slow change and, to some extent, ‘taken-for-grantedness’. Thus, cultural values and slow-changing technological, structural and social change processes are conceptually located ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Author biographies
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Rationale
• PART II: Case study applications
• Appendix: list of key source papers for chapters
• Index