As part of the ENCHANT project, interventions will be developed, implemented and tested to reveal energy efficiency potential of households through behaviour change. These interventions will be implemented to a wide range of users through existing communication channels (used by energy providers, municipalities, and NGOs) and thus tested in real-life settings.
The case study areas where the interventions will be tested in ENCHANT, cover a wide range of geographical contexts, and will be articulated around three main typologies of formalized actors:
- Energy providers and/or producers (electricity, gas): will actively support the consortium in the contact with, and active involvement of, large customer databases.
- Municipalities and governmental energy agencies (centralized or local): will allow for the project to reach large numbers of citizens at the receiving end of massive information campaigns, in order to develop and test interventions.
- NGOs in the energy and sustainability sector: will present the possibility of involving specific stakeholders or organized groups in the civil society or the public, in order to develop and test interventions.
The key role of the user partners at ENCHANT is to deliver “intervention packages” to the people they will access, their customers, members, and visitors, through their existing or new communication channels.
Randomized Control Trial (RCT) method is used to make the study scientifically vigorous. In this method, a group of citizens, customers, and members/visitors are randomly selected to receive the intervention packages, and the remaining people are determined as the control group who do not receive the intervention packages. In order to detect behavioural changes, pre-intervention and post-intervention consumption/behaviour data are need to be compiled.
To be utmost comprehensive in its approach, ENCHANT will target a population of 8.4 million households, via these three actors. As a result of the interventions, it is aimed that 270.000 of the households will make changes towards a more sustainable lifestyle, 60.000 will use more energy efficient transportation technologies within 5 years, and 34.000 will make improvements to increase energy efficiency in their buildings.
One of the main aims of the intervention packages to be implemented in the ENCHANT project is to understand how (by which tools and by which communication channels) people's energy-related behaviour can be affected. ENCHANT will focus on three types of behaviour change:
- 1. Investment behaviour: encouraging people to invest in energy efficient technology, building upgrades and/or transport. For example, downloading an app registering energy consumption.
- 2. Maintenance behaviour on equipment keeping energy efficiency high, e.g. heaters, cars, tires.
- 3. Everyday energy saving behaviour reducing heating, cooling, and consumption of hot water, changing transport mode.
Keywords: Energy behaviour, energy efficiency, energy saving, intervention packages, investment behaviour
