Determinants of electricity conservation in South African households : a social marketing perspective

D.Phil. (Marketing Management)Abstract: Many developing countries, including South Africa, experience great challenges with regard to balancing electricity supply and increasing demand. For example, between 2008 and 2015, South Africa frequently experienced higher electricity demand over supply capacity. The high electricity demand emanates from the increase in business activities, industrialisation, rising population, and immigration. Households play a central role in the escalating electricity demand in South Africa and consume about 20% of the electricity and contribute to about 30% of peak period demand, which often leads to blackouts. A short-term solution to handle the high demand of electricity over supply available was to implement a rotational electricity load shedding program. This however left some areas without electricity for extended periods of time and often resulted in huge economic losses. For a more desirable and cost-effective way to reduce electricity demand, various media, including the country’s national TV are being widely used to create awareness about the electricity problem and to run campaigns promoting electricity conservation tips. A 2013 study by the South African Department of Energy (DoE) aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the campaigns revealed that public awareness of the problem and the electricity saving measures substantially increased, but the actual electricity conservation behaviour did not significantly change. The goal of a successful social marketing campaign is behaviour change. Achieving this change requires solid consumer research aimed at examining the major factors helping and hindering the adoption of the desired behaviour. The desired behaviour for this study is electricity conservation. For understanding of possible determinants of electricity conservation, extant literature around the topic was first reviewed. The review revealed that most energy conservation studies revolved around two streams of research. The first is the individualistic stream which is premised on the reasoned action approach generally explained by the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The second is the altruistic stream of research, which is derived from the norm activation approach developed in the Norm Activation Model (NAM). With the aim of holistically understanding the determinants of electricity conservation, this study combined the individualistic and altruism approaches, and added economic and socio-demographical moderators to propose an integrated conceptual model. The model encapsulated social, psychological, economic and demographic factors to help explain the decision to conserve electricity in households..