Who consumes and who conserves? Housing energy use and technology adoption across lifestyle groups

Abstract

Residential energy consumption is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon inequalities, yet patterns of energy consumption and technology adoption vary substantially across social groups. This study examines how multidimensional lifestyle affiliations shape pro-environmental consumption patterns, including sufficiency, efficiency and consistency compatible practices. Drawing on a nationally representative survey carried out in Germany with a final sample size of 1817 respondents, we deploy latent class analysis to identify six distinct lifestyle types based on socio-economic, attitudinal and housing characteristics. We then assess how affiliation with these lifestyle types relates to differences in pro-environmental energy-related behaviours, household carbon footprints, and subjective well-being, using Welch ANOVA and Games–Howell post hoc tests. The findings show marked heterogeneity across lifestyle classes: high-income groups living in spacious dwellings tend to exhibit the highest per-capita energy use and carbon footprints, whereas affluent but younger and urban households display the lowest. Families show the highest uptake of energy-efficient and renewable technologies, while sufficiency-oriented practices appear to be driven by necessity rather than pro-environmental or sufficiency-oriented values. Subjective well-being also differs across lifestyle types, with high income not consistently associated with higher well-being, highlighting the potential role of values, life stage, and housing characteristics. Finally, we find that similar levels of energy consumption can result from distinct mechanisms – in some cases through reduced consumption, and in others through the adoption of efficiency or consistency technologies. These findings highlight the need for differentiated and equity-sensitive policy mixes, such as progressive pricing for high-consuming groups combined with rent-neutral efficiency standards and targeted support for structurally constrained households.