Can Social Marketing Segmentation Initiatives Be Used to Increase Household Electricity Conservation?

Abstract

Australia is one of the highest per capita emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, therefore improving energy conservation efforts is important to Australia's economic, social, and environmental well-being. In such an environment, long-term policy changes to energy conservation are likely to be contentious, complex, and costly. In this context the use of a complementary social marketing segmentation framework to guide the intervention process could provide additional leverage for policy makers to facilitate short-term improvements, which are aligned with their longer-term goals. This article focuses on the application of market segmentation techniques as potential motivators to electricity conservation efforts in the existing context of residential users of electricity in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It investigates the impact of a range of hypothetical consequence incentive packages (i.e., financial reward and feedback frequency) on attitudes toward energy conservation using a cross-sectional survey of 188 respondents from metropolitan NSW residents. It is proposed that incentive packages for energy conservation campaigns will be most effective when targeted specifically to each of the environmental attitudes and beliefs segments.