To climb or not to climb? Investigating energy use behaviour among Solar Home System adopters through energy ladder and social practice lens

Abstract

Solar Home Systems (SHSs) and other off-grid solutions have shown promise in addressing the energy access gap for those with no or unreliable grid services. With that promise comes the expectation to boost socioeconomic well-being of newly-connected households, who will continue climbing up the energy ladder. Despite the growing appreciation for the need to go beyond the techno-economics of energy access, and the recognition of the value of socio-technical systems perspective, the wider sociology of energy consumption and behaviour among adopters of off-grid solar solutions has been poorly explored. In this paper, we apply the Social Practice Theory (SPT) and the energy and solar energy ladder framework to analyse energy consumption and the changing social practices of SHSs users in Rwanda. We find that social practices change dynamically and depend on available appliances, whereas energy consumption follows a complex path but does not increase in a linear manner with time or more appliances. Insights can prove useful for public and private agencies working on off-grid electrification, offering a new perspective on the energy and solar energy ladder concepts while also showing the importance of social aspects of energy access even at relatively low levels of provision currently offered by SHSs. Bibliography Aklin, M. et al., 2017. Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India. Science Advances, 3(5), pp.1-9.

Can Pay-As-You-Go, Digitally Enabled Business Models Support Sustainability Transformations in Developing Countries? Outstanding Questions and a Theoretical Basis for Future Research

“…For example, cultural clashes between ideas of possession vs. ownership were observed to make repossession of PAYG equipment in the event of default difficult, especially where customers were accustomed to free handouts from past development projects. Fluctuations in income and ability to top up payment plans due to the nature of customers' livelihoods were also noted (e.g., agricultural incomes, or highly-mobile market traders-the former also being noted by Bisaga and Parikh [18]). This inflexibility towards seasonal incomes potentially undermines Rolffs et al's [8] point on the close match between PAYG payment plans and existing consumer practices around paying for energy.…”

“…As inferred above, the existing literature is at best patchy and a long way from providing any comprehensive overview of what is a rapidly expanding and metamorphosing phenomenon. A literature search using Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, together with direct approaches to authors of some of the papers these searches identified to ask if they were aware of other literature we had missed, resulted in identification of only five articles in mainstream academic journals [8,9,12,18,19], seven articles in practitioner journals [20][21][22][23][24][25][26], and six detailed reports [5,7,10,11,27,28]. Of these latter, three were produced by the global mobile operators' key trade association (the GSMA) [7,11,27], one by researchers from UC Berkeley based on a study commissioned by the World Bank [10], one by the World Resources Institute [5], and one by an independent think tank, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor [28].…”

“…Barrie and Cruickshank [9] operationalize a "diffusion of innovations" theoretical perspective, which originates from the work of rural sociologist Rogers [29]. Finally, Bisaga and Parikh [18] speak to the theory of the "energy ladder" from energy access/energy and development research. Bearing in mind that within the social sciences it is theory, built from multiple observations across myriad different contexts, that supposedly allows research to work towards more generalizable insights.…”

“…One other notable characteristic of this emerging literature is the use, in three cases [9,12,18], of remote, mobile-enabled data, collated by PAYG companies, on consumer practices, consumer financial risk profiles, and the technological performance of solar home systems and other technologies to which PAYG businesses facilitate access (e.g., battery performance, charging profiles, and impacts of weather). In the case of the three aforementioned peer-reviewed analyses, these data have facilitated sophisticated analysis that is able to look in detail at the practices of consumers.…”

“…Elsewhere in the literature, Bisaga and Parikh [18] explicitly refer to social practice theorists when reporting on observed shifts in social practices once PAYG systems are installed, where consumers are observed to change their practices to mirror the availability of energy in a solar home system. They also note the relevance of the availability of appliances in influencing this.…”