For the question of what role human behavior plays as part of the mismatch problem between energy supply and demand, a closer empirical look was taken to analyze context structures of energy using behavior in households and exemplefy the resulting consequences for power demand. Restrictions on changing behavior were discussed as well as the suggestion to lift those restrictions as an intervention to increase behavioral variability and shifting potentials in time. But there are also other, more common approaches to develop interventions for changing behavior or more specifically changing energy demand behavior.

1. 1.

   Sheeran (2002) also includes as further examples the attitude-behavior theory (Triandis, 1980) and the protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1983).

2. 2.

   As can be seen by the prominent use of NAT and VBN for explaining environmentally relevant behavior, different types of pro-environmental behavior have been regarded as examples of pro-social behavior (Bamberg & Möser, 2007), which by Schwartz is described as behavior which can benefit others (Schwartz, 1977).

3. 3.

   This phrasing will be used to describe situational / contextual characteristics from an intentional perspective.

4. 4.

   I find it misleading that Hineline (1990) uses the term “eliciting” at this point, because for me it is language referring more to a push-pull mechanism understanding of behavior and as Hineline himself points out, that is not a theoretical assumption in behavior analysis.

5. 5.

   The TPB is a mixed model in this regard as situational constraints are taken into account by assuming that next to behavioral beliefs and normative beliefs, control believes lead in combination via their aggregates attitude towards the behavior, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control to the formation of a behavioral intention (Ajzen, 2002). Given a sufficient degree of actual control over the behavior, it is predicted that people act in line with their intentions if the opportunity arises (Ajzen, 2002). To the extent that people’s judgements on behavioral difficulty is accurate, perceived behavioral control is viewed as a proxy for actual control and can contribute directly to the prediction of behavior (Ajzen, 2002) without “the detour” via internal constructs.

6. 6.

   One also distinguishes static TOU tariffs from dynamic TOU tariffs. The static implementation is characterized by a variation in fixed price levels over fixed periods like for example seasons (Parrish et al., 2019). The most common tariff structure described for German electricity providers is also an example of a static TOU.

7. 7.

   For staying within the basic idea of price-based DR intervention, the question whether an internal process of knowing exists or is necessary for theoretically explaining that consequences select behavior is neglected at this point. Although in short, the assumption would be that instead of knowing enough, a necessary condition for observing shifting behavior would be that changing monetary values dependent on time of day is a reinforcer of a certain appliance using behavior.

8. 8.

   Main factors discussed as influencing diversity of PED estimates are factors such as data type, evaluation methods and sample periods (Espey & Espey, 2004; Labandeira et al., 2017; Zhu et al., 2018).

9. 9.

   Zhu et al. (2018) show this by displaying a density plot and histogram together in one plot. Unfortunately, no absolute numbers are provided for the histogram, but the visual inspection of this plot summarized as “almost all” being less than one is reasonable.

10. 10.

    Maybe the use of the term “incentive” as it is often used within intervention literature is not helping the situation of devising effective interventions. First, because it obscures why changing something like the monetary structure associated with electricity consumption could potentially be effective (because it is set as a consequence of a behavior) and second, because by this it makes the questioning of premises building on the idea of using pricing incentives more distant to questioning.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Braunschweig, Germany

   Farina Wille

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Correspondence toFarina Wille.

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