Transition from Individual interest to Collective interest in Gas Consumption

Today, energy consumption has become one of the most important social issues and planning and policy to encourage people to use it optimally, has put subscribers in a social dilemma (personal preferences over social priorities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the tendencies (altruistic / selfish) as a social dilemma of household customers in gas consumption and to identify the social factors affecting it. After reviewing the research literature and concepts related to social dilemma, hypotheses were defined. The research strategy is deductive and the explanation was used to investigate the research problem. The approach of this study was quantitative and the survey method was used for measurement. Data collection tool is a researcher-made questionnaire. Formal validity was used to evaluate the validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess the reliability of the questionnaire. The statistical population consisted of household subscribers in Mazandaran province. Using random cluster sampling method, 510 people were selected as the statistical sample. The findings of the study showed that the consumption of gas by household subscribers defended the community's interests. Regression analysis showed that environmental values, institutional trust, social norms, and self-efficacy had the greatest impact on subscribers’ collectivist tendencies in gas consumption. Thus, at the local community level, individuals in the two social dilemmas (individual preferences / collective preferences), under the influence of the aforementioned factors, preferred the collective interests.