CONCEPTIONS OF ENERGY SHORTAGES AND ENERGY CONSERVING BEHAVIOR.

This paper explores the attitudes and behaviors of Texas citizens in response to the circumstances existing during and shortly after the Arab countries' oil embargo of Spring 1974. The focus is on the credibility of defining the situation in terms of incipient long-term energy shortages and on the adoption of energy conservation practices. The purpose of the paper is to elucidate the relationships between the attitudes which people held about the energy situation and their efforts to conserve energy. The authors found that most of those surveyed did not interpret energy shortages as simply a result of the Arab countries' oil embargo. Even fewer interpreted the events of the spring of 1974 as the advent of a serious energy crisis for the U.S. Skepticism about the reality of the crisis seemed linked to distrust of energy' producing corporations and leadership in the national government. The findings suggest that differences in energy conserving behavior were dependent on differences in the degree to which the energy crisis was credible and on differences in socioeconomic status. Many of those who could afford to pay the costs of higher priced energy continued their consumption patterns pretty much as before the period of shortages.