The intention-behavior gap in electricity consumption: A longitudinal study

The intention-behavior gap is a psychological phenomenon which has been identified within a wide variety of areas of research. The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of intention on actual electricity consumption. This separates the study from most previous studies as these tend to use self-assessment measurements of electricity consumption. The study consists of a five-week, longitudinal, quantitative data collection. This data was then analyzed using longitudinal structural equation modeling (LSEM). Analysis found practically nonexistent relationships between intentions to save electricity and actual electricity consumed across the five weeks in the longitudinal model. Perceived behavioral control was found to be the most influential predictor of intention. The relative impact of attitudes started out non-significantly in week one but increased over time to then decrease again, and the relative impact of subjective norm remained stable over time only to turn negative in the last week. This is compared with previous findings that generally have found attitudes to be the strongest predictor of intention to save electricity, followed by perceived behavioral control and subjective norms.