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• Smart home technologies offer great potential to lower end-user CO 2 emissions. • Survey conducted on adopters and non-adopters of smart home technologies. • Social network characteristics and communication behaviours investigated. • Potential social barriers to mass market diffusion identified. Consumer-facing digital innovations with the potential to reduce carbon emissions often exist in small market niches and their impact has been limited thus far. Using the established Diffusion of Innovations theory which considers interpersonal communication amongst social networks to be a vital mechanism for exchanging information, we conducted an online survey in the UK to investigate the social networks and communication behaviours of adopters and non-adopters of three different energy saving smart home technologies. Applying social network analysis and statistically testing hypotheses, our results reveal the potential social barriers to the diffusion of information, with social network structure and characteristics creating obstacles. This research provides necessary insights into real early adopters, confirms the importance of focussing research on the often-neglected social elements of diffusion theory and helps identify marketing strategies and policy actions using social mechanisms to accelerate a low carbon transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries' emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement have significant implications for lifestyles. National planning to meet emission targets is based on modelling and analysis specific to individual countries, whereas global integrated assessment models provide scenario projections in a consistent framework but with less granular output. We contribute a novel methodology for translating global scenarios into lifestyle implications at the national and household levels, which is generalisable to any service or country and versatile to work with any model or scenario. Our 5Ds method post-processes Integrated Assessment Model projections of sectoral energy demand for the global region to derive energy-service-specific lifestyle change at the household level. We illustrate the methodology for two energy services (mobility, heating) in two countries (UK, Sweden), showing how effort to reach zero carbon targets varies between countries and households. Our method creates an analytical bridge between global model output and information that can be used at national and local levels, making clear the lifestyle implications of climate targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]