How installers select and explain domestic heating controls

Though central heating controls have the potential to reduce the energy consumed through domestic space heating, their installation does not guarantee savings. End users do not always understand their controls, or operate them in an energy-efficient way, but there is little appreciation of why this is. Drawing on an ethnographic study, this paper investigates how installers select and explain central heating controls. With reference to the concept of technology scripting, which suggests that the assumptions made about users during the design of devices can influence their eventual use, it shows how heating installers also draw on certain user scripts. Through these means the paper illuminates the significant role that heating installers play in influencing the control products fitted into homes, and how they might be used. Though their use of these scripts is understandable, it is not always conducive to ensuring that central heating systems are operated in the most energy-efficient way. It is suggested that industry and policy-makers might engage with how installers understand users and revise current guidelines to foster better communication between them

Public understanding of sustainable tourism

If tourism is to become part of a more sustainable lifestyle, changes are needed to the patterns of behaviour adopted by the public. This paper presents the results of research conducted amongst members of the public in England on their understanding of sustainable tourism; their response to four desired tourism behaviour goals, and expectations about the role of government and the tourism industry in encouraging sustainable tourism. The research shows a lack of awareness of tourism’s impact relative to day-to-day behaviour, feelings of disempowerment and an unwillingness to make significant changes to current tourism behaviour

A decade of learning about publics, participation, and climate change:Institutionalising reflexivity?

Building on previous studies of participatory learning amongst individuals within discrete participation processes, the authors examine organisationally situated processes of learning related to public participation in science and environmental governance. Qualitative analysis of documents and semistructured interviews is used to explore frames of participation, publics, and the issue of climate change, both transforming and stable. This illuminates trends of learning in the context of the organisational network around the UK Government-funded body Sciencewise and related organisations, from 2000 to 2010. It is argued that formal organisational learning mechanisms foster instrumental learning, precluding reflective and relational learning which could potentially transform organisational assumptions and routines around participation. However, informal social networks have promoted transformative social learning and reflexivity at particular moments during the decade