The Transmission of Energy-Saving Behaviors in the Family: A Multilevel Approach to the Assessment of Aggregated and Single Energy-Saving Actions of Parents and Adolescents

Abstract

The present article examines the transmission of energy-saving behaviors in the family on two levels. We investigated the extent to which energy-saving performance differed between adolescents in relation to parental behavior on an aggregated level but also across single behaviors within adolescents. Furthermore, we investigated whether social context (e.g., private areas in a household) interfered with one of the basic mechanisms assumed for this transmission (observation). Correlations between 13 self-reported single energy-saving behaviors from 264 adolescents and their respective parents ( N = 554) were analyzed by combining a path analysis with a multilevel approach. There were strong significant correlations between parents’ and adolescents’ energy-saving behaviors, mediated by adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ behavior. The congruence between parents’ self-reports and adolescents’ perceptions was lower in private contexts than in shared social contexts in the household. This indicates that differentiated investigations with single behaviors and a focus on the social context (e.g., observability) are needed in transmission research.