Understanding and shaping consumer behaviour for good.
One of the reasons households cannot buy the most energy-efficient products is the information is not visible when we shop. But even if it is visible, would consumers -all consumers - change they way they shop?
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Challenge
How can we get a better understanding of how consumers make energy purchasing decisions at home?
Why don’t we as consumers always buy the most energy-efficient products and appliances for our homes? This was the founding question for Enervee - a US-based climate tech’ start-up. Part of the answer rested on the fact that consumers cannot actually see product-specific efficiency information (relying instead on broad category labels like EnergyStar or the EU energy efficiency ratings).
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But although data science and software engineering could find and present these product attributes to shoppers, an important question remained: would consumers act on this information?
Solution
Designing lite interventions to nudge and boost, and change behaviour.
The service had two key pieces of product information - its relative energy efficiency and how that translates into cost savings over the lifetime of the product. We then designed a series of experiments to explore whether consumers would act on this information ie would the visibility of these previously shrouded attributes alter consumer preferences?
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We also set-out to understand if pre-existing views about the environment would be influential, as well as if you were buying ‘in a rush’ or as part of a wider renovation project. Finally, we wanted to understand if consumers held a common ‘lay theory’ about efficiency and purchase price (i.e. higher efficiency means higher purchase price), and if so, what could we do to switch that off?
Results
All households can be steered towards making more efficient purchases - on average 20% more efficient.
​The results revealed that consumers will buy more efficient products when exposed to the relative efficiency of products (presented as a 0-100 score). This effect was seen regardless of whether the consumer had reported any pro-environmental attitudes previously. However, the presentation of financial savings was only effective with low-income shoppers. This led to revisions in the product design to make this information effective for all shoppers.
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Why someone is buying was seen to be influential; rushed shoppers considered energy efficiency less than those in more measured purchases. However, the efficiency score was effective across both buying situations. We also identified a strong and bi-directional lay theory effect (consumers thought efficient products were more expensive, and more expensive products were more efficient). As this is a false view, this led to a series of product design changes to ensure consumers remained engaged through the buying the process.
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The results have been presented a wide array of conferences (e.g. BECC, ACEEE & AESP) and published in Energy Efficiency (a key resource for regulators who are purchasers of the service). The demonstration of the ability to influence household consumer behaviour also garnered recognition for innovation from a number of sources including Grid Edge and AESP, and was heralded for its market transformation potential by the California Energy Commission.