wholeSEM's Surrey team recently conducted 'walking interviews' to study domestic social practices. 'Walking interviews' are a useful tool for investigating people’s relationship with space and allows the researcher to explore issues within the context they occur. Dr Thomas Roberts, University of Surrey, discusses the process and initial findings in his blog post 'Energy consumption and everyday life'.

Professor Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey, comments further in his blog post 'Understanding household energy use' and discusses how the team plan to build an agent based model to look at the 'the interconnection and evolution of domestic social energy practices'.

Through ethnographic data collection and agent-based modelling, wholeSEM's Surrey team will formulate an ecology of energy consuming social practices and use this to understand the critical points where policy interventions may be able to affect behaviour.

Further information:

wholeSEM Work Package 2 - Behaviour, Practices and Demand

Professor Nigel Gilbert

Dr Thomas Roberts