Abstract
Together with our utility clients, Enervee is experimenting with behavioural intervention strategies to see which are most effective in nudging purchasing decisions toward more efficient products. This paper presents results on decision-making, preferences and online shopping behaviour obtained from a series of observational (utility-branded marketplace platform analytics) and experimental studies (randomized controlled trials). Within the trials, we tested potential direct and interaction effects of two distinct but related energy product attributes that improve market transparency: an energy score (a relative product model energy efficiency index) and energy savings (estimated energy bill dollar savings compared to a base model benchmark). The trials all show that the use of an energy score has a significant effect on consumer product choices, encouraging them to select more energy-efficient products, consistent with the observational data. These robust results make a strong case for leveraging heuristics-based nudges to drive energy-efficient purchasing behaviour at scale. Responses to the energy bill savings information varied across the studies, offering insights about the influence of buying context and decision styles on consumer choice. The simple-to-process energy score appears to elicit a hot/impulsive decision style, whilst the cognitively more complex energy bill savings information prompts a reflective/cool decision style. Overall, the studies provide intriguing and robust insights to inform the continued development of cost-effective and scalable interventions to drive more energy-efficient consumer product choices.
Highlights
The product choices that consumers make when purchasing appliances, equipment and electronic gadgets that consume natural resources during their operational phase lock in consumption over their lifetime
Whereas all product categories are sortable by energy attributes—both energy score and energy bill savings—as well as product model, size/capacity and price, utilities do not offer rebates on all categories
This paper reports results from a series of observational and experimental studies, designed and run in concert, to explore and test the effectiveness of two distinct, but related, pieces of energy efficiency information
Summary
The product choices that consumers make when purchasing appliances, equipment and electronic gadgets that consume natural resources during their operational phase lock in consumption over their lifetime. Typical useful lifetimes for major domestic appliances range from 10 to 15 years, with shorter lifetimes for electronics and longer lifetimes for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment. Given the need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the immediate future, if we are to limit the average global temperature increase to between 1.5 and 2 °C, the billions of one-time purchasing decisions being made by consumers annually matter. The best commercially available consumer products and residential HVAC equipment offer tremendous scope to reduce energy requirements below business as usual. Influencing 30% of US product purchase decisions across four product categories (refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers, TVs) in a single year to super-efficient models with Enervee Scores of 90+ would save 15,100 GWh (see Fig. 1), more energy than needed to meet the annual residential electricity demand of Los Angeles and Sacramento combined
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