Successful climate change mitigation will involve not only technological innovation, but also innovation in how we understand the societal and individual behaviors that shape the demand for energy services. Traditionally, individual energy behaviors have been described as a function of utility optimization and behavioral economics, with price restructuring as the dominant policy lever. Previous research at the macro-level has identified economic activity, power generation and technology, and economic role as significant factors that shape energy use. However, most demand models lack basic contextual information on how dominant social phenomenon, the changing demographics of cities, and the sociocultural setting within which people operate, affect energy decisions and use patterns. Here we use high-quality Suomi-NPP VIIRS nighttime environmental products to: (1) observe aggregate human behavior through variations in energy service demand patterns during the Christmas and New Year's season and the Holy Month of Ramadan and (2) demonstrate that patterns in energy behaviors closely track sociocultural boundaries at the country, city, and district level. These findings indicate that energy decision making and demand is a sociocultural process as well as an economic process, often involving a combination of individual price-based incentives and societal-level factors. While nighttime satellite imagery has been used to map regional energy infrastructure distribution, tracking daily dynamic lighting demand at three major scales of urbanization is novel. This methodology can enrich research on the relative importance of drivers of energy demand and conservation behaviors at fine scales. Our initial results demonstrate the importance of seating energy demand frameworks in a social context.

中文翻译：

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灯火通明：追踪能源服务需求中的文化模式。

成功的减缓气候变化措施不仅涉及技术创新，而且还涉及创新方式，即我们如何理解影响能源服务需求的社会和个人行为。传统上，人们将个体的能源行为描述为效用优化和行为经济学的函数，而价格调整则是主要的政策杠杆。先前在宏观层面上的研究已将经济活动，发电和技术以及经济角色确定为影响能源使用的重要因素。但是，大多数需求模型缺乏有关主导社会现象，不断变化的城市人口统计以及人们所处的社会文化环境如何影响能源决策和使用方式的基本背景信息。在这里，我们使用高质量的Suomi-NPP VIIRS夜间环境产品来：（1）通过圣诞节和新年期间以及斋月的圣月期间能源服务需求模式的变化，观察人类的总体行为；（2）证明能源行为密切跟踪国家，城市和地区一级的社会文化界限。这些发现表明，能源决策和需求既是社会文化过程，也是经济过程，通常涉及基于价格的个人激励措施和社会层面的因素。虽然夜间卫星图像已用于绘制区域能源基础设施分布图，但是在三个主要城市化规模上跟踪每日动态照明需求是新颖的。这种方法可以丰富有关精细规模能源需求和节能行为驱动因素相对重要性的研究。我们的初步结果证明了在社会背景下建立能源需求框架的重要性。