Energy and environmental awareness in Swedish and American households.

This paper compares energy and environmental awareness in two small towns in Sweden and Minnesota over time. In the early 1980s, Minnesotans were more anxious and exerted greater conservation efforts than the Swedes, but both are now bored with energy issues. They focus instead on environment-namely, recycling. Saving money continues to dominate decisions, but time is gaining priority in tradeoffs of energy, money, and time. Environmental concern is usually sacrificed to economics. Certain culturally-valued behaviors override both more conserving alternatives and economic considerations. Lacking the will to conserve, consumers say that they need, even wish for, some external authority to force them to do so. In general, consumers dislocate their personal activities from larger energy and environmental problems.