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Understanding Energy Practices: A Case for Qualitative Research

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Chelsea Schelly at Michigan Technological University
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Abstract

While researching the adoption of residential solar electric technology through a comparative two-state case study, participating solar electric technology adopters indicated some ways that policy—namely, the structure of incentives provided via their state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), local rebate program incentives, and the requirements for eligibility to receive economic incentives—influenced their energy behaviors both prior to and after installing solar electricity at home. Arguably, insight into the nuances of their energy practices emerged as a function of research design involving a qualitative interview process that allowed for unstudied and unpredicted responses during the interview process. This note makes a case for using qualitative research methods to understand energy behaviors as a method for exploring energy practices, consistent with an emergent emphasis on practice theory in studies of natural resource consumption.
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Society & Natural Resources
An International Journal
ISSN: 0894-1920 (Print) 1521-0723 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/usnr20
Understanding Energy Practices: A Case for
Qualitative Research
Chelsea Schelly
To cite this article: Chelsea Schelly (2015): Understanding Energy Practices: A Case for
Qualitative Research, Society & Natural Resources
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2015.1089613
Published online: 14 Dec 2015.
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SOCIETY & NATURAL RESOURCES
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2015.1089613
Understanding Energy Practices: A Case for Qualitative
Research
Chelsea Schelly
Department of Social Sciences, Environmental and Energy Policy Program, Michigan Technological University,
Houghton, Michigan, USA
ABSTRACT
While researching the adoption of residential solar electric technology
through a comparative two-state case study, participating solar
electric technology adopters indicated some ways that policy—
namely, the structure of incentives provided via their state’s renew-
able portfolio standard (RPS), local rebate program incentives, and
the requirements for eligibility to receive economic incentives—
influenced their energy behaviors both prior to and after installing
solar electricity at home. Arguably, insight into the nuances of their
energy practices emerged as a function of research design involving a
qualitative interview process that allowed for unstudied and
unpredicted responses during the interview process. This note makes
a case for using qualitative research methods to understand energy
behaviors as a method for exploring energy practices, consistent with
an emergent emphasis on practice theory in studies of natural
resource consumption.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 30 January 2015
Accepted 17 August 2015
KEYWORDS
Energy behavior;
motivations for behavior;
practice theory; qualitative
research; solar technology
adoption
Residential energy consumption patterns have a large impact on the demand for environ-
mental resources (Dietz et al. 2009). Energy policies at the state level and federal level can
encourage changes in residential energy usage, and some states have policies that incentivize
solar electric (also known as photovoltaic or PV) technology adoption at the residential
scale. While the United States continues to lack a comprehensive national energy policy
(Lutzenhiser 2001), the majority of states now have renewable portfolio standards (RPSs),
policies that mandate a certain amount of electricity from renewable energy sources. RPSs
are intended to advance several goals simultaneously, including addressing the environmen-
tal consequences of burning fossil fuels, promoting environmentally benign sources of
electricity generation, advancing emerging renewable energy technology industries, and
promoting economic development (Carley 2009; Glenna and Thomas 2010; Wiser, Barbose,
and Holt 2011). Some states include specific policy mechanisms in RPSs intended to pro-
mote distributed energy technologies. In response to these policies, utility companies and
governments may financially incentivize renewable energy technology at the residential
scale through rebates offered at the time of installation or by paying customers for the excess
electricity through contracted grid interconnection and net-metering agreements. The most
lucrative grid interconnection agreements are feed-in tariffs, where customers are paid more
for the electricity they produce in excess of what they consume than they pay for electricity.
CONTACT Chelsea Schelly cschelly@mtu.edu Department of Social Sciences, Environmental and Energy Policy
Program, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931, USA.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
Downloaded by [Chelsea Schelly] at 06:31 15 December 2015
These policies aim to minimize the negative environmental impacts of energy use by
decreasing electricity demand and increasing renewable energy generation.
Qualitative interviews with residential PV adopters indicate that policies intended to
encourage PV technology adoption also encourage changes in energy practices, and in
some cases encourage homeowners to consume more electricity, not less, as would be
consistent with policies intended to encourage environmentally responsible energy
behaviors. This article reports on research conducted with residential PV technology
adopters that unexpectedly provided insight into how residential energy practices are
shaped by the structure of incentive programs meant to encourage the adoption of
PV systems. The findings presented here and specifically the research methodology
through which they emerged suggest that qualitative research methods provide an
unparalleled opportunity to examine the contours of social practice with regard to
energy behaviors.
Practice theory scholarship focuses on how individuals engage with the material world
through a shared set of socially defined practices, relatively stable and unthinking patterns
of behavior that are shaped by the confines and limitations present in the built environ-
ment, governing policies, and social norms (Reckwitz 2002; Spaargaren 2003; Shove
2004; Warde 2005; Schelly 2014). This perspective is becoming increasingly popular
for explaining consumption (Røpke 2009) and even specifically energy consumption
(Gram-Hanssen 2011; Shove 2012). Practice theory encourages researchers to conceptua-
lize social practices as the core unit of social research (Spaargaren 2011) and to recognize
the role of policies in shaping practice. As other practice scholars have noted, qualitative
research methods are fundamental for understanding practice (Spaargaren and Oosterveer
2009).
In this specific case of examining how policies shaped motivations for adopting residen-
tial PV technology, a qualitative methodology allowed respondents to provide unexpected
information regarding how policies shaped energy practices both before and after installing
a PV system. There are several approaches to understanding the relationship between
values, policy, and environmental behaviors (Shwom and Lorenzen 2012), but qualitative
research methods based on practice theory offer distinct advantages. Instead of focusing
purely on individualist, precalculated motivation (Shove 2010), using a practice approach
to qualitatively examine patterns in energy behaviors provides unique insight into how
policies shape energy practices (Spaargaren and Oosterveer 2009). Qualitative research
exploring behaviors and explanations for behaviors provides a distinct advantage for
examining the impacts of policy on practice. Qualitative research methods are an important
tool for using practice theory to understanding natural resource intensive practices,
particularly energy behaviors, and provide unparalleled insight for understanding how
policies shape practice.
Case Selection and Research Methods
This research project involved interviewing 96 homeowners (48 in two states) about their
motivations, specifically, the role of economic policies incentivizing adoption and their per-
sonal environmental values, in shaping the decision to adopt PV technology. Homeowners
were also asked about their energy-related household behaviors and other resource-related
residential practices. The two states were chosen because they are similar economically and
2 C. SCHELLY
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politically
1
but vary in the types of incentives offered for residential PV adoption. Colorado
offers large up-front rebates, often covering (when combined with the 30%federal tax
credit) more than 50%of residential PV installation cost. Wisconsin, in contrast, offers
smaller up-front incentives, but the state’s largest utility companies offered a feed-in tariff
paying customers two to two and one-half times retail rates for excess electricity fed back
to the grid, meaning that customers could receive monthly checks for excess electricity gen-
eration. Colorado utility companies pay customers wholesale rates for excess generation,
much lower than the retail rates that customers must pay for electricity. In Colorado, home-
owners can receive rebates for a system sized at the lesser of either 10 kW or 120%of annual
usage. In contrast, Wisconsin allows rebates for systems up to 20 kW. Emphasizing policy
diversity in the selection of the case studies helped specifically address the research question
regarding how policies impact motivation to adopt (Becker 1998; Small 2009).
Homeowners were recruited via installation companies and utility companies (which
were contacted and asked to pass on an e-mail to their clients), through letters mailed
to past solar home tour participants, and through snowball sampling. Sampling focused
on maximizing geographic diversity across each state. Interviews largely took place in
respondents’ homes, and lasted between 1 and 3 hours. Interviews were transcribed and
coded in order to understand motivations for adoption and to examine energy practices;
the relationship between specific policies mechanisms and household energy practice
was an unexpected theme that emerged through the coding process. (For more information
about participants and data analysis, see Schelly [2014]).
Research Findings
In Colorado, all 48 homeowners said that they identified as environmentalists or were moti-
vated to install based on environmental concerns. Nevertheless, they talked about how the
policies in their state discouraged them from installing a system that could generate more
electricity than they use and how policies even encouraged them to use more electricity both
before and after installing—the exact opposite behavior of what you might expect from
someone who identifies as environmentally oriented and is willing to invest in PV tech-
nology. Homeowners talked about deliberately using more power the year before installing
so that they could install larger systems and more power after installation to avoid being
paid back at wholesale rates when paying the much higher retail rates for electricity
consumed. Homeowners talked about how policies actually encouraged them to use more
electricity both before and after PV installation.
In contrast, less than two-thirds of homeowners in Wisconsin said that they identified as
environmentalists or were motivated to install their PV system based on environmental
concern. Yet they talked about how the feed-in tariff policy encouraged them to conserve
energy even after installing so that they could increase the amount they received for excess
generation. The policy design in Wisconsin broadened the potential motivations for adop-
tion as well as encouraging future electricity conservation.
1
Wisconsin and Colorado are similar politically, with high concentrations of political liberalism in urban areas and contrast-
ingly high rates of conservatism in rural areas. According to U.S. Census data, median household income is lower in
Wisconsin ($51,598) than in Colorado ($56,456; national median income is $51,914). The poverty rate in Colorado is slightly
higher (12.2%) than in Wisconsin (11.6%), but both are below the national poverty rate (13.8%). Homeownership rate in
Colorado is 67.6%, with a median home value of $236,600; homeownership rate in Wisconsin is 69.5%with a median
home value of $169,000.
SOCIETY & NATURAL RESOURCES 3
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Wisconsin’s feed-in tariff encouraged homeowners to continue reducing their energy
usage after installing a PV system. In contrast, policy structures in the state of Colorado
encourage homeowners to use more electricity to increase the size of the system they
can install and to get the most, economically speaking, out of their systems (see Schelly
2014).
Conclusion: Using Qualitative Research to Study Energy Practices
Scholars working from the perspective of social practice theory (Reckwitz 2002; Warde
2005) contend that behaviors like energy consumption are best understood as constella-
tions of practices shaped and stabilized by external factors like the built environment, pol-
icy structures, and social norms. Based on this perspective, the specifics of each state’s
incentives for residential PV adoption operate as systems of provision to shape the social
practice of energy use (Spaargaren 2003). The specific design and implementation of RPS
policy in both Wisconsin and Colorado shaped the practices of individual homeowners,
nudging or limiting their behaviors in the context of the systems of provision offered to
them (Spaargaren 2003).
Here, the key finding is that these findings would not have emerged without talking to
homeowners directly using an open-ended qualitative methodology. While qualitative
methods are certainly not the only means of studying PV technology adoption (Schelly
2010), they are arguably the only way to get at the practices that individuals engage in
and the processes that they say explain their behaviors (Mills 1940). Sayre (2004) noted that
qualitative research tools help to examine behaviors that impact the environment specifi-
cally in the context of uncertainty. The research presented here suggests that researchers
may not know what they do not know unless they go and ask for the rich, contextualized
explanations of process that only qualitative research can provide, and that this may be an
important tool for assessing policies that are meant to impact environmentally consequen-
tial social practices.
This research project highlighted the importance of qualitative research for understand-
ing the impacts of energy policy on energy practice. While some have noted the methodo-
logical challenges of research based on practice theory (Halkier, Katz-Gerro, and Martens
2011), others have also recently demonstrated the strength of qualitative research for
understanding environmental practices (Naus et al. 2014; Wertheim-Heck, Vellema, and
Spaargaren 2014). Certainly, interviews are not the only tool for qualitative research; quali-
tative work may also involve direct observation, textual analysis, or asking participants to
keep logbooks of specific practices for analysis. Yet interviews allow individuals to describe
their behaviors and explain the contexts shaping their behaviors in ways that can improve
understandings of how policies shape practice. Specifically, in the realm of energy beha-
viors, qualitative research based on a practice framework may offer the most fruitful insight
into how policies impact environmentally consequential patterns of human engagement.
Funding
This research was funded in part by an Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results
(EPA-STAR) Fellowship (FP-91717101). Research support was also provided by the Robert F. & Jean
E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
4 C. SCHELLY
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Full-text available
  • Mar 2020
Limiting study to a narrow range of energy and water using activities is insufficient to provide a holistic understanding of household resource flows. Consideration of a wide range of social practices is needed. With the rise of low-carbon developments featuring energy or water efficient technology and design around the world, the way residents interact with the design and technology and community is vital to understanding if these households and developments will meet their intended design goals. The opportunity to study resident's pre-and post-occupancy resource consumption is a unique opportunity to examine how design, technology and community influence household practices. This article studied 13 Australian household's practices of waste management, food shopping, item purchasing, travel and laundry practices for two weeks before and after moving into a low-carbon development, while the home system of practice is in a stable phase. This provides an opportunity to comment on the state of interlocking of resident's home system, from lightly interlocked to highly. Post-occupancy, the presence of solar panels influenced when some residents put the washing machine and tumble drier on, however only when the resident was home. Many residents are conscious of putting these on during the day or use timers where they had not previously. Changes to resident's travel practices were not as broad as they anticipated before the move, while recycling rates increased, influenced by a supportive community and shopping practices became more localised through the use of smaller food retailers. Results show that resident's resource use is heavily influenced by their work and socialising routines, which are not commonly focused on when attempting to change household resource use behaviours. A traditional focus on psychological approaches targeting values and attitudes fails to adequately address these factors, whereby a social practice theory approach allows for their consideration in influencing resource use in the home.
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Green roles at home: exploring the impact of household social dynamic processes on consumption at the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus
Article
  • Mar 2023
Capturing the social dynamic processes among household members that work to shape consumption patterns presents a complex problem for household resource conservation studies. To bridge the gap between the individual and household, we propose and test a series of quantitative measures that explore the underlying structure of household social dynamic processes through the lens of social practice theory. Based on previous qualitative research, we develop measures to test five distinct social dynamic processes that either encourage or deter pro-environmental action: enhancing, norming, preferring, constraining, and allocating. In a sample of households (n = 120) from suburban Midwestern USA, we find that positively framed social dynamic processes (enhancing and positive norming) positively predict variance in frequency of food-, energy-, and water-conserving pro-environmental actions. Pro-environmental orientation of the individual respondent, in turn, is positively associated with perception of positively framed dynamics. These findings suggest that social dynamic processes influence individual decision-making about household consumption, supporting previous research that illustrates consumption as embedded within the relationships that form residential life. We suggest ways forward for quantitative social science researchers to explore consumption through a practice-based approach that considers the influence of social institutions on emission-intensive lifestyles.
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The Social Class and Lifestyle Embeddedness of Being Within Energy Infrastructures
Chapter
  • Dec 2022
The most energy-intensive consumers on the planet are humans living in industrialized countries who rarely, if ever, question that there will be lighting to turn on in their homes at night, taps that produce water when turned, and the capacity to maintain thermal comfort at the touch of a button or two. The lived experiences of dwelling for the most economically privileged humans of the world involve a positioning within intensively impactful energy infrastructures that are also rendered invisible through complacent use. Being embedded within energy infrastructures simultaneously involves embeddedness in particular class and lifestyle positions. Based on interviews with over forty US homeowners identified as upper-middle class, who are, therefore, economically and materially comfortable, this chapter explores the implication of energy infrastructures in the positioning and distinguishing of social groups based on economic class. These interviews, which asked participants about patterns and potential for changing consumptive practices associated with food, energy, and water, reveal the invisibility of energy infrastructures and their role in maintaining class-based identities. Energy infrastructures are implicated in the mobilization and stability of class distinctions; infrastructural being is also differentiated being, based on class and lifestyle group. Attempting to shift energy infrastructures to be more visible, more intentional, and less intensively impactful requires contending with the role of these infrastructures in social class, status, and lifestyle. Changing energy infrastructures requires grappling with how they are mobilized in class and lifestyle differentiations.
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Applying practice theory to the study of consumption: Theoretical and methodological considerations
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2011
  • J Consum Cult
Practice theories are a set of cultural and philosophical accounts that focus on the conditions surrounding the practical carrying out of social life. In recent years, practice theories have spread to include anthropology, cultural studies, design studies, environment and sustainability research, geography, consumer behaviour and social policy research. The authors invited to contribute to this special issue promise to move debates forwards by showing applications of practice theory to diverse empirical terrains, by making suggestions for methodological consequences in using practice theory and by fusing practice theoretical perspectives with other theoretical inputs. The applications of practice theory presented in this volume extend from the most mundane aspects of everyday life (e.g. cooking), to structured activities in institutional settings (workplace environmental behaviour), with attention given to both momentary actions and long term pursuits. The main common thread that links the articles is that individuals are seen as practitioners engaged in the practice of everyday life. The authors view the material environment – objects, tools, devices and apparatus – and the implicit and explicit practical knowledge stored in them, as central in the process of creating interaction, continuity and reality. Pulling all these contributions together, in this introduction we highlight some of the theoretical advances that they offer.
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Viewpoint: The need for qualitative research to understand ranch management
Article
  • Nov 2004
The use and management of rangelands involves both ecological and social processes, and it is in the interaction of these that conservation is or is not achieved. Overall, the ecological dimensions of rangelands and rangeland management have been studied in greater detail and are better understood than the social dimensions. This paper argues that qualitative methods are necessary to understand the management of rangelands by ranchers. Existing studies using quantitative methods have found little correlation between ranchers' management practices and a variety of social factors. One consistent finding of these studies, however, is that profit is a secondary or insignificant motivation among ranchers, casting doubt on the premise that economic self-interest motivates ranchers to embrace improved management practices. The theoretical and methodological implications of this finding have not been adequately recognized in rangeland science. With its greater flexibility and attention to context, qualitative research can reveal social, historical, political, and economic factors that affect ranch management but have eluded quantitative studies. In addition, qualitative methods are better suited to capturing both the processes that generate ranchers' "mental models" and the historical information needed in light of recent theoretical advances in rangeland ecology. Suggestions for future research on ranch management include conducting case studies of smaller areas over longer temporal periods, focusing on interactions among ranchers, giving ranchers a greater role in identifying research needs, studying urbanization and other "new" rangeland issues, and drawing on research about pastoralist societies elsewhere.
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Toward a theory of social practice: A development in culturalist theorizing
Article
  • Jan 2002
  • Eur J Soc Theor
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
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Changing Household Consumption to Address Climate Change: Social Scientific Insights and Challenges
Article
  • Sep 2012
Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG)-intensive consumption can be an important route to reducing the GHG emissions that cause climate change. To effectively mitigate climate change by reforming human consumption patterns we must have a comprehensive understanding of the linkages between consumption and climate change and how consumption may be altered. This article begins by reviewing the empirical research that links consumption and GHG emissions and identifies GHG-intensive actions and systems. We then identify four social science understandings of consumption: the consumer as homo economicus, the predictably irrational consumer, the locked-in consumer, and the socially organized consumer. These understandings of consumption that emerge from economics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology lead us to different conclusions on what can be done to change consumption patterns to mitigate climate change. To effectively transform consumption, we advocate the implementation of a range of policy solutions and explore several levers for managing change. WIREs Clim Change 2012 doi: 10.1002/wcc.182 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
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Constrained consumer practices and food safety concerns in Hanoi
Article
  • Jun 2014
  • Int J Consum Stud
Food safety is a widely recognized concern in Vietnam. Public officials, companies and consumers find different ways to address risks of pesticide residues and bacterial contamination related to the use of fresh vegetables in daily diets. The response of the government to these food safety risks includes the modernization and regulation of the food retail system. However, reforms that aim to offer a controlled and predictable provision of fresh vegetables through supermarkets seem to contrast with the daily consumer practices in a dynamic city as Hanoi; over 95% of vegetables is still being purchased at long-established open-air markets, importantly the informal and unhygienic street markets. Using a practices theory approach, this paper aims to explain this persistence of street-market shopping for vegetables. Detailed accounts of consumer practices, case studies at different retailing sites and daily logbooks of consumers demonstrate that the way consumers cope with food safety risks is largely shaped by the temporal and spatial constraints of their daily shopping practices. We identified how vegetable shopping is either enjoyed as social interaction within the local community or is regarded a time-consuming activity that conflicts with other activities in everyday life. Our findings indicate how these constraints constitute a reinforcing mechanism for the persistence of uncontrolled and unhygienic street markets. To make policy responses to food safety risks both more realistic and effective, it is essential to connect to and accommodate the daily realities of consumers managing time and space in a modernizing city rather than to impose an ideal, typical market exclusively driven by the wish to control food safety risks.
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Schelly, C. (2014). Implementing Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a Two State Comparison. Energy Policy 67, 543-551.
Article
  • Apr 2014
  • ENERG POLICY
Understanding how household practices with regard to energy usage change and how to most effectively encourage the adoption of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources at the residential scale are important issues for addressing the environmental impacts of energy use. Here, the social practices model (Spaargaren, 2003) is applied to examine solar technology adopters in two U.S. States who were interviewed about adopting residential solar electric technology and specifically about their experiences with the rebate and incentive programs available to them. Examining the policies and interrogating their potentially unintended consequences from the perspective of the user sheds light on how residential solar incentive programs act as systems of provision, shaping the practices of solar technology adopters, in hopes of improving these incentive programs and effectively encouraging increased residential solar technology adoption. Findings suggest that feed-in tariffs offer additional positive outcomes related to broadening the context for adoption and encouraging future energy conservation while size restrictions, wholesale pricing in net metering agreements, and inconsistent policy mechanisms across utilities in the same state all have potentially unintended negative consequences. Utilizing a perspective attentive to social practice offers a means of improving the design and implementation of energy policy.
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Smart grids, information flows and emerging domestic energy practices
Article
  • May 2014
  • ENERG POLICY
Smart energy grids and smart meters are commonly expected to promote more sustainable ways of living. This paper presents a conceptual framework for analysing the different ways in which smart grid developments shape – and are shaped by – the everyday lives of residents. Drawing upon theories of social practices and the concept of informational governance, the framework discerns three categories of ‘information flows’: flows between household-members, flows between households and energy service providers, and flows between local and distant households. Based on interviews with Dutch stakeholders and observations at workshops we examine, for all three information flows, the changes in domestic energy practices and the social relations they help to create. The analysis reveals that new information flows may not produce more sustainable practices in linear and predictable ways. Instead, changes are contextual and emergent. Second, new possibilities for information sharing between households open up a terrain for new practices. Third, information flows affect social relationships in ways as illustrated by the debates on consumer privacy in the Netherlands. An exclusive focus on privacy, however, deviates attention from opportunities for information disclosure by energy providers, and from the significance of transparency issues in redefining relationships both within and between households.
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Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture : Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order
Article
  • Aug 2011
  • GLOBAL ENVIRON CHANG
Within the environmental social sciences, theories of practices are used by an increasing number of authors to analyze the greening of consumption in the new, global order of reflexive modernity. The use of practices as key methodological units for research and governance is suggested as a way to avoid the pitfalls of the individualist and systemic paradigms that dominated the field of sustainable consumption studies for some decades. With the help of practice theory, environmental governance can be renewed in three particular ways: First, the role and responsibilities (not) to be assigned to individual citizen-consumers in environmental change can be specified. Secondly, objects, technologies and infrastructures can be recognized for their crucial contribution to climate governance without lapsing into technological determinism. Third, the cultural framing of sustainability can be enriched by looking into the forms of excitement generated in shared practices of sustainable consumption. We conclude by discussing the need to investigate the globalization of practices from a post-national perspective in both science and policy.
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Understanding Change and Continuity in Residential Energy Consumption
Article
  • Mar 2011
  • J Consum Cult
Practice theory has recently emerged within consumer studies as a promising approach that shifts focus from the individual consumer towards the collective aspects of consumption, and from spectacular and conspicuous dimensions of consumption towards routine and mundane aspects of consumption. Practice theory is, however, not a commonly agreed upon theory, but more like an approach, or a turn within contemporary social theory. When using practice theory in consumer studies, there are thus several conditions that need further clarification. The focus in this article is on how change and continuity in practices can be understood in practice theory. Discussions will include the balance between routinization and reflectivity as well as ways to understand the role of new technology in introducing change in consumer practices. One aspect of this is a discussion on how to include technologies and other types of material consumer goods in practice theory. Case studies on household energy consumption are used as an empirical basis for these discussions. Looking at household energy consumption through the theoretical lens of practice theory necessitates discussion on whether energy consumption should be viewed as one single practice or part of several different practices. The latter stimulates questioning on how these different consumer practices are related to each other horizontally and vertically, as parallel practices or as different levels of practices, and whether changes in one practice affect (or refrain from affecting) other related consumer practices, whether through reflexivity, routines or the materiality of consumer goods.
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‘How Many Cases Do I Need?’ On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research
Article
  • Mar 2009
Today, ethnographers and qualitative researchers in fields such as urban poverty, immigration, and social inequality face an environment in which their work will be read, cited, and assessed by demographers, quantitative sociologists, and even economists. They also face a demand for case studies of poor, minority, or immigrant groups and neighborhoods that not only generate theory but also somehow speak to empirical conditions in other cases (not observed). Many have responded by incorporating elements of quantitative methods into their designs, such as selecting respondents `at random' for small, in-depth interview projects or identifying `representative' neighborhoods for ethnographic case studies, aiming to increase generalizability. This article assesses these strategies and argues that they fall short of their objectives. Recognizing the importance of the predicament underlying the strategies — to determine how case studies can speak empirically to other cases — it presents two alternatives to current practices, and calls for greater clarity in the logic of design when producing ethnographic research in a multi-method intellectual environment.
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