Energy inputs and household behaviour in France

Abstract

In order to understand the relations between contemporary life styles in France and the total consumption of energy, it is necessary to consider both the energy directly consumed within the home and that which enters the house through manufactured goods. The balance between these two forms of energy consumption has changed continuously over the past twenty years. People living in apparently similar conditions may have quite different behaviour patterns because significant cultural and symbolic dimensions are superimposed onto the factual reality. Modes of energy consumption are generated in a dynamic procedure in which the current social position of the household is a determining factor, but in addition it also depends on past experience and on future expectations or goals. Understanding the energy dependence of different life styles, or the capacity of households to modify their energy consumption, must be based therefore, on the analysis of the specific social and residential trajectories of each socio-cultural group.