Non-profit organizations have been found to score higher on warmth-related traits, while for-profit organizations are rated higher on competence-related traits (Aaker et al., 2015). For energy communities, which aim to generate financial benefits for members but are organized in a collective manner with non-financial impact as main goals, this differentiation has so far not been researched. It is also unclear whether these dimensions predict participation in energy initiatives.
This study served as a first step to experimentally test different framings for agency and communion on energy initatives.
We conducted a survey (N = 216) using 2 x 2 design, varying energy initiative (energy company, energy community) and attributes (agency, communion), using pictures and description texts. We calculated a unidimensional measure of agency-communion as a difference of agency and communion, with lower scores tending towards communion and higher scores tending towards agency.
Participants in the group that learned about energy companies rated them higher in agency compared to those that learned about energy communities (b = 0.309, p = 0.038). Intention to participate in an energy initiative was predicted by a preference towards communion rather than agency (b = -0.261, p = - 0.003). The indirect effect of this mediation was marginally significant (b = -0.081, p = 0.088). Participants also scored agentic images marginally more agentic (b = 0.246, p = 0.098) compared to communion images, but we did not find a significant indirect effect for its mediation for intention to join energy initiatives (b = -0.064, p = 0.149).