U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE…

                 U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
             COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
        SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

                                 HEARING CHARTER

             The Contribution of the Social Sciences to the Energy Challenge

                            Tuesday, September 25, 2007
                               10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
                         2318 Rayburn House Office Building



1. Purpose

On Tuesday, September 25, 2007, the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education
of the House Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing to examine how
research in the social sciences, including the behavioral and economic sciences,
contributes to the design, implementation and evaluation of effective policies for energy
conservation and efficiency.


2. Witnesses

Dr. Robert Bordley, Technical Fellow, Vehicle Development Research Laboratory,
General Motors Corporation

Dr. Robert Cialdini, Regents' Professor of Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State
University

Dr. Jerry Ellig, Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University

Mr. John "Skip" Laitner, Visiting Fellow and Senior Economist, American Council for
an Energy Efficient Economy

Dr. Duane Wegener, Professor of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University


3. Overarching Questions

·   What contribution do the social sciences make to our ability to predict or evaluate the
    effectiveness of public policies in changing individual and collective behavior related
    to energy use?
·   What new and continuing areas of basic research in the social sciences could
    significantly improve our ability to design effective policies? What new technologies
    and methodologies are enabling advances in the research? Are there promising
    research opportunities that are not being adequately addressed?
·   To what extent are policies (both private and government) to influence energy
    consumption patterns actually being shaped by what has been learned from the social
    sciences?


4. Federal Spending on Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences

Basic and applied research in the social, behavioral and economic (SBE) sciences is
funded out of a number of federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as other agencies within the
Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Commerce, Defense,
Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice,
Labor, State and Transportation. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Smithsonian Institution also provide some funding in these areas. Notably, given the
topic of this hearing, the Department of Energy does not have a program of social science
research applied to the energy challenge.

According to research funding statistics compiled by NSF 1 , a total of just over $1 billion
was obligated to basic and applied research in all social sciences for fiscal year 2004
(FY04), including $200 million for economics. Psychology was counted separately, and
was funded at a total of $1.85 billion in FY04, of which $1.7 billion was funded by NIH
and over $90 million was funded by DOD and Veterans Affairs. The primary interest of
those three agencies is the medical aspect of psychology.

The main support for basic research in the social sciences comes from the SBE
Directorate at NSF. Overall, NSF accounts for 61 percent of federal support for basic
research in anthropology, social psychology and the social sciences at U.S. colleges and
universities. In some fields, including archaeology, political science, linguistics, and
non-medical aspects of anthropology, psychology, and sociology, NSF is the
predominant or exclusive source of federal basic research support. The NSF SBE budget
request for fiscal year 2008 (FY08) is $220 million, an increase of 3.9 percent over FY07.
In addition to funding basic research in the social, behavioral and economic sciences,
NSF's SBE Directorate funds the collection and analysis of data on science and
engineering research, education and workforce trends (including the data presented here),
resulting in the biannual "S&E Indicators." This activity accounts for $31 million in
FY08, or approximately 15 percent of the SBE Directorate budget.




1
 Data are based on self-reporting by agencies. In many cases, especially where there is interdisciplinary
work, it is hard to tally exact dollars spent on one field or another, so these values are at best an estimate.
5. Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and the Energy Challenge

A key part of the solution to our energy challenge is the development of more efficient,
cleaner energy technologies. This is a primary mission of the Department of Energy.
However, while it may be impossible to quantify, individual and collective behavior also
plays an important role, not just through direct use of energy, but also by creating or
failing to create market demand for more energy efficient technologies. Individuals
across the United States make decisions every day about what vehicle or appliance to
purchase, whether to drive or take public transportation, what light bulbs to install,
whether to shut down their computers at night. Each one of these decisions, from turning
off the computer to buying a 35 mpg sedan versus a 15 mpg SUV, has an impact on the
supply and demand curve that drives both energy prices and energy technology
development, has some environmental footprint, and in the case of oil and natural gas,
may have an impact on national security.

These impacts are generally quantified in the aggregate, based on data collected by the
Energy Information Administration. In 2005, U.S. households consumed 21 quadrillion
BTU (quad) of primary energy, accounting for 21 percent of total U.S. energy
consumption. To put this in perspective, people in the United States consume 2.4 times
as much energy at home as those in Western Europe, in large part because our homes are
twice as large and not designed for energy efficiency, despite the availability of
affordable technologies to make them so. Household vehicles account for an additional
14 quad or 14 percent of primary energy, resulting in an overall household total of more
than one-third of annual U.S. energy consumption.

In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) produced a report on "Decision
Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities." Much
of the research called for in the report is of an applied nature- for example, quantifying
the environmental or economic impact of every minute action, such as running the
clothes dryer during peak hours instead of off-peak hours. Information such as this might
help policy makers prioritize efforts and could even stimulate technological innovation,
but it isn't clear that such information would actually influence consumer behavior. In
the chapter on Environmentally Significant Individual Behavior, the NAS panel states
that, "A basic understanding of how information, incentives, and various kinds of
constraints and opportunities, in combination with individuals' values, beliefs, and social
contexts, shape consumer choice in complex real-world contexts would provide an
essential knowledge base for understanding, anticipating, and developing policies for
affecting environmentally significant consumer behavior."

Energy-related behavior is significant not just to the environment, but to the consumer's
own monthly expenses, to the economy as a whole, and to national security. The
National Science Foundation is not responsible for generating the needed data on
environmental and economic impact called for in the NAS report, or for sharing it with
the public. However, NSF does fund the basic research in the social, behavioral and
economic sciences that can help inform policymakers at all levels in the development,
implementation and evaluation of information campaigns, incentives programs,
regulations and other public policies to change how we use energy in this country.
A similar story can be seen in the recent history of smoking in the United States.
Changing societal norms resulted in a society that is now hostile to smokers and as such
have greatly reduced the number of smokers, resulting in reduced health risks for
individuals and a reduced burden on our collective health system. But linking smoking to
lung and other cancers was not sufficient to bring about this decrease. Nor was the
knowledge that second-hand smoke was harmful to others. Advertising by tobacco
companies still made smoking look "sexy" just as car company advertisements make
large SUV's look very appealing to the typical consumer. In addition to laws restricting
advertising, and the near elimination of smoking from movies and television (the
characters who light up in today's movies are typically the "bad guys"), public officials
and non-profit organizations launched major information campaigns targeted at different
populations. Many of those information campaigns failed to influence smoking behavior,
in particular among youth. Social and behavioral researchers eventually helped to
determine what kinds of advertisements and other antismoking campaigns work for
which target populations.

There are many parallels to behavior and persuasion in the energy challenge. A 2003
survey commissioned by the Alliance to Save Energy found that an overwhelming
majority of consumers (92 percent) agree that business, government, and consumers have
an equal responsibility to reduce energy use. But attitudes have not translated into action.
Social science researchers can help create and provide information in an understandable
manner, a particularly challenging task in the case of energy; determine how information
interacts with all of the other factors listed by the NAS panel to affect consumer
behavior; understand variation in these interactions across subsets of the population; and
work with policy makers to help shape targeted information campaigns and policies.

The Department of Energy launched an "Energy Hog" energy efficiency campaign in
2004. The Energy Hog website provides useful information to consumers about how to
save energy without spending a lot of money. Such information, however, is primarily
reaching those self-selecting consumers who actively seek it. The majority of Americans,
despite concern for both the environment and rising energy prices, simply don't consider
energy in their own behavior or in that of their neighbors. The purpose of this hearing is
to explore the basic research that could help policy makers understand why attitudes
about energy don't currently translate into action.



6. Questions for Witnesses

Dr. Robert Bordley
·   Please describe the type of market research you do for GM and how your background
    and experience as a social scientist influences your work.
·   What has social science research revealed about factors that influence an individual's
    vehicle purchasing decisions? What questions remain unanswered? Have you looked
    specifically at the issue of fuel economy?
·   How are recent breakthroughs in research incorporated into marketing or business
    strategies? What role might the National Science Foundation play in building bridges
    between academic social science researchers and government and industry policy
    makers?

Dr. Robert Cialdini
·   Please describe the work you have done recently on individual behavior and energy
    conservation. What have you learned about what influences the decisions individuals
    make with respect to energy use?
·   How can this research be used more effectively to inform policy? Do you as a
    researcher reach out to policy makers or others in a position to influence policy? If
    not, how would you propose that these connections be made? Can the National
    Science Foundation play a role?
·   What basic social psychology research questions relevant to the energy challenge
    remain unanswered? Do social scientists have all of the tools they need to answer
    these questions and adequate resources to pursue promising research directions? Are
    there as of yet undeveloped or underdeveloped technologies or methodologies that
    would help advance this research?

Dr. Jerry Ellig
·   How predictive is a purely economic approach to evaluating the impact of energy
    policy on individual and communal behavior? What factors other than price signals
    need to be considered when developing and applying economic models to energy-
    related behaviors?
·   To what extent are policies to influence individual and community energy use being
    shaped by what has been learned from research in the social sciences, including
    economics?
·   What tools and methodologies are most appropriate for evaluating the effectiveness
    of policies to incentivize consumer behavior with respect to energy use? What kinds
    of basic research questions underlie the development of such tools and
    methodologies?

Mr. John "Skip" Laitner
·   How predictive is a purely economic approach to evaluating the impact of energy
    policy on individual and communal behavior? What other factors need to be
    considered to match economic theory to empirical data? To what extent are such data
    even available? That is, to what extent are relevant energy policies being evaluated
    for effectiveness?
·   To what extent are policies to influence individual and community energy use being
    shaped by what has been learned from research in the social sciences, including
    economics? Are you aware of particular sectors of industry or government that make
    more of an effort to incorporate the results of such research into the design and
    evaluation of policy?
·   Please describe the purpose and scope of the first-ever Behavior, Energy and Climate
    Change Conference being organized by ACEEE. What do you hope to achieve
    through this conference? How much interest have you seen from industry,
    government officials, and others in a position to influence policy?

Dr. Duane Wegener
·   Please describe your involvement in the Purdue Energy Center, and in particular the
    mission and goals of the Social, Economic, and Political Aspects of Energy Use and
    Policy team of the Center. How and to what degree does your team interact and
    collaborate with the technology teams at the Center?
·   How much support do you and your colleagues in this area get from federal funding
    agencies? Have you sought any support from or partnerships with public or private
    utilities or other non-governmental entities?
·   What has social science research revealed about factors that influence how Americans
    form attitudes relevant to energy use and policy? How can this research be used more
    effectively to inform policy?
·   What basic social psychology research questions relevant to the energy challenge
    remain unanswered? Do social scientists have all of the tools they need to answer
    these questions and adequate resources to pursue promising research directions? Are
    there as of yet undeveloped or underdeveloped technologies or methodologies that
    would help advance this research?