Becoming allies: Combining social science and technological perspectives to improve energy research and policy making

Conference · Mon Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2002

OSTI ID:839225

Diamond, Rick ^[1]; Moezzi, Mithra

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1. LBNL Library

Within the energy research community, social sciences tends to be viewed fairly narrowly, often as simply a marketing tool to change the behavior of consumers and decision makers, and to ''attack market barriers''. As we see it, social sciences, which draws on sociology, psychology, political science, business administration, and other academic disciplines, is capable of far more. A social science perspective can re-align questions in ways that can lead to the development of technologies and technology policy that are much stronger and potentially more successful than they would be otherwise. In most energy policies governing commercial buildings, the prevailing R and D directives are firmly rooted in a technology framework, one that is generally more quantitative and evaluative than that fostered by the social sciences. To illustrate how social science thinking would approach the goal of achieving high energy performance in the commercial building sector, they focus on the US Department of Energy's Roadmap for commercial buildings (DOE 2000) as a starting point. By ''deconstructing'' the four strategies provided by the Roadmap, they set the stage for proposing a closer partnership between advocates of technology-based and social science-based approaches.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE. Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Office of Building Technology. State and Community Programs (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 839225
• Report Number(s): LBNL--50704
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
BUSINESS
COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
MARKET
MARKETING
PERFORMANCE
SOCIOLOGY