Energy Conservation in Academic Institutions: An Application of Theory of Planned Behavior

Energy conservation is a buzzword that cuts across a broad spectrum of stakeholders. It has been widely practiced, developed, and discussed in government, political, and industrial sectors due to its massive impact on tackling issues related to climate change and global warming as well as presenting opportunities to cut energy costs. Despite the active discussion of this topic in the literature, very few papers have discussed it in the context of academic institutions which has one of the most significant impacts in terms of energy consumption. To address the issue, this paper places the topic of energy conservation in the context of academic institutions. Moreover, it adopts the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the success of energy conservation initiatives in academic institutions by looking at user behavior and its antecedents. Finally, this paper contributes significantly to the literature as it is one of the very few papers and arguably the first to discuss energy conservation in the context of academic institutions using the Theory of Planned Behavior. Furthermore, this paper will be beneficial for practitioners and other stakeholders in that it provides them with a framework to investigate the success of implementing energy conservation initiatives, especially, in academic institutions by looking at the antecedents of user behavior.