Emotions and fuel poverty: The lived experience of social housing tenants in the United Kingdom

Longhurst, Noel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1630-0150 and Hargreaves, Thomas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3764-7364 (2019) Emotions and fuel poverty: The lived experience of social housing tenants in the United Kingdom. Energy Research & Social Science, 56. ISSN 2214-6296

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Abstract

Dominant policy understandings of fuel poverty tend to overlook its lived experience. This results in narrow, overly technical problem framings and solutions that neglect the multiple, inter-related and dynamic factors that shape experiences of fuel poverty in situ. Recent qualitative work that has examined the lived experience of fuel poverty has begun to recognise the importance of emotional and subjective experiences to experiences of energy vulnerability, but these are generally regarded as consequences of the problem and thus are not treated as central to analyses. This paper explores a range of emotional engagements with energy vulnerability. The paper draws on new empirical data taken from 16 semi-=structured interviews with social housing tenants as well as 10 interviews and a focus group (n=8) with housing association employees. Three distinct forms of emotion engagement were identified as of critical importance for experiences of energy vulnerability: i) worry, fear and control; ii) relationships of care; iii) embarrassment, trust and gratitude. Crucially, and for the first time, the paper shows that emotions are not merely a consequence of energy vulnerability but can also help to cause it. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Early Title: Emotions and energy vulnerability: The lived experience of social housing tenants
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 7 - affordable and clean energy ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/affordable_and_clean_energy
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Science, Society and Sustainability Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	25 Jan 2019 11:30
Last Modified:	14 Jun 2023 13:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/69680
DOI:	10.1016/j.erss.2019.05.017

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