An Image of Electricity: Towards an Understanding of How People Perceive Electricity

Although an enormous amount of research effort has been devoted to understanding people’s energy consumption habits, visualizing their consumption and finding ways of motivating them towards more sustainable behaviours we are still in the dark with regards to people’s basic perception of electricity, their concept of what electricity is and their notion of the consumption rates of various electrical devices. In this study we have employed a sketching methodology to elicit people’s basic mental image of what electricity is, how they conceive of the electrical infrastructure in their home and which devices they think represent the largest drain on their wallets. Preliminary analysis of the results show that people do not have a clear mental model of electricity and tend to associate the size of the device and the duration of use with higher rates of consumption regardless of the type of device, the type of use it is put to and its actual consumption level.