行为决策理论在能源节约管理中的应用

Application of Behavioral Decision Theory in Energy Conservation Management

能源短缺是人类面临的重要课题,节约能源是人类需要采取的刻不容缓的行动。仅仅依赖金钱刺激很难解决能源浪费问题,而心理与行为科学可以发挥重要作用。本文梳理了应用行为决策的经典理论(如,安于现状偏差、决策双系统模型、参照点效应、框架效应和社会规范等)促进节能行为的研究成果,同时总结了诸如情绪、认知对象特点、信息呈现等影响个体节能行为的因素,最后从开展本土化研究、研究方式改进和拓展应对措施的角度对未来研究提出建议。希望本文能给心理学研究者一定的借鉴和启发,在节能管理领域做出更有价值的研究,以最终提高民众节能意识、增加民众节能行为。

Energy shortage is one of the most difficolt problems that human-beings need to solve. Human-beings use energy in everyday life, including water, gas, fossil oil and so on. Energy plays an important role in the development of human. However, the lack of awareness of energy conservation and bad habits in everyday life lead to the increasingly serious energy shortage. Owing to the fact that much energy is non-renewable; human-beings should realize the importance of energy-saving. Researchers have tried many ways to persuade individuals to encourage people to conserve energy, most of which are financial incentive. But the effectiveness of these approaches is complex, as they apply rational thinking to decision-making but ignore the non-rational decision processes. It seems that humanity is fated to be irrational. Instead of making a comprehensive cost analysis, People often use mental shortcuts or rules of thumb to complete a decision. Behavioral science concentrates on the deviation from standard rational decision- making models, and emphasizes the biases and errors resulted from irrationality in decision-making. By reviewing related literature that examines how biases in decision making can be used to encourage individuals＇ energy-saving behaviors and promote policy decisions; we find these studies use simple interventions to nudge people to make more optimal energy-saving decisions. Several decision biases and theories related to energy- saving decision are discussed, such as status quo hias~ reference point effect, framing effect, duel system theory and social norm. Status quo bias is a preference for the current state and default option which makes people tend to do nothing and keep the current or previous decision, though the it is not the most favorable choice. In addition, individuals will set a reference point in d^cision-maldng and consider less or great energy consumption, then they will adjust the energy-consumption behaviors. Furthermore, framing effect means that two normatively equivalent descriptions of the same option often lead to systematically different choices. Different descriptions of energy-saving behavior lead to different choices in energy-saving. Besides, duel system theory proposes that there are separate cognitive systems that control human decisions： System 1 and System 2, the decision processes of which are distinct and interactive. System 1 makes decisions be fast, heuristic and automatic while System 2 makes decisions be slow, reflective and deliberate. Researches show that System 1 governs most of the energy-consumption decisions without specific energy-saving methods. Therefore, the heuristic strategy employed by it tends to result in wasting energy behavior. People＇s behavior is greatly influenced by others, which becomes the powerful effect of social norms. When it comes to energy-saving, the norm-based interventions work primarily by making people more aware of their own behavior. Then, the influencing factors of the energy-saving decision are also discussed, including the way and content of energy- saving information dissemination, the characteristics of cognitive objects and emotion. In the end, we predict the directions of future research. We offer three main potential directions： （1） Pay more attention to indigenous research about energy-saving decision （2） Improve the method to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions （3） Seek for new interventions and apply them to practice.