Household energy conservation and locus of control: A research note

Five hypotheses were tested to investigate whether personality is a factor in household energy conservation beliefs and actions. Locus of control, the personality measure which distinguishes between individuals designated as internals or externals, was assessed in a survey of 383 households in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The results indicate that only one hypothesis—obtaining information on energy issues from the media is a positive function of internality—reached significance, and one other hypothesis tended toward significance. We conclude that locus of control is a limited predictor of household energy conservation beliefs and actions, and recommend that energy conservation programme planners consider persuading externals to behave more internally.