To climb or not to climb? Investigating energy use behaviour among Solar Home System adopters through energy ladder and social practice lens

摘要: Abstract Solar Home Systems (SHSs) and other off-grid solutions have shown promise in addressing the energy access gap for those with no or unreliable grid services. With that comes expectation to boost socio-economic well-being of newly-connected households, who will continue climbing up ladder. Despite growing appreciation need go beyond techno-economics access, recognition value socio-technical systems perspective, wider sociology consumption behaviour among adopters solar has been poorly explored. In this paper, we apply Social Practice Theory (SPT) ladder framework analyse changing social practices SHSs users Rwanda. We find change dynamically depend on available appliances, whereas follows a complex path but does not increase linear manner time more appliances. Insights can prove useful public private agencies working electrification, offering new perspective concepts while also showing importance aspects even at relatively low levels provision currently offered by SHSs.