California Energy Crisis project

This area will contain information (draft papers, etc) about my research into conservation behavior during the California electricity crisis. Also see information about my other papers.

Abstract

I investigate how the behavioral consequences of altruism and a fairness motive are affected by various situational factors in a large scale social dilemma: the California electricity crisis (2000–2001). Altruism centers around trying to benefit the community as a goal in itself; and a fairness motive centers around everyone doing their fair share. I show that, although both of these motives can lead to cooperative behavior in a social dilemma, the behavioral consequences of these motives are affected differently by such situational factors, as ownership for a problem, efficacy beliefs, and expectations of others' behavior. Altruism and a fairness motive are captured by a survey of 700 consumers in California while cooperative behavior is calculated from actual electricity consumption data that were acquired from Californian utility companies.

What is available here

• slides.pdf Slides for the occasional presentation I make
  [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 17:47:39 EST; 311K]
• energy.pdf: Draft of the paper.
  [Last modified: Wednesday, 01-Sep-2004 18:38:41 EDT; 345K]
• crosscorr.pdf Correlations table in a form that doesn't require a magnifying glass to read.
  [Last modified: Friday, 28-Jun-2002 19:05:50 EDT; 34K]
• model.pdf Copy of the main figure within the paper.
  [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 18:26:17 EST; 1.6K]
• Figures (PDF) illustrating differences in interaction effects of the four moderators on the two motives
  • criticality [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 17:49:44 EST; 1.1K]
  • efficacy [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 17:49:44 EST; 1.1K]
  • ownership of problem [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 17:49:44 EST; 1.1K]
  • expections of others [Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Apr-2003 17:49:44 EST; 1.1K]

Related papers

Several of my other papers may be closely related to this, including:

Distinguishing distrust from vigilance

Separate paper from the same data collection

Multiple motives for cooperation

Describes my over all approach to cooperative behavior.

Time travel, mind control and other everyday phenomena required for cooperation

A detailed discussion of another specific cooperative motive

Version: $Revision: 1.8 $
Last Modified: $Date: 2003/08/12 07:22:44 $ GMT
First established Feb 7, 2002
Author: Lívia Markóczy