Abstract
Interventions to promote energy conservation among households have been employed with varying degrees of success. Especially, energy audits had been considered to be an effective intervention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of home energy audits and examine underlying psychological determinants of energy use and energy savings. Measurement survey was carried out at 48 households in Kashiwano-ha Campus City, who were recruited to participate in this experiment. Energy audits were sent to them providing their current consumption and giving a range of energy-saving options based on their situation. As a result, it was found that energy audit may cause attitude change, but may not cause behavior change. And the contents must be edited to suit the value sense and characteristics of different consumers to promote behavior change. Also, lower consumers of electricity, who had received home energy audit, tend to have more positive effect on electricity conservation. This paper shows the short-term effects of energy audits from psychological aspect and electricity consumption aspect.
