Evaluating Energy Culture: Identifying and validating measures for behaviour-based energy interventions

Conference item

Energy behaviour is embedded within the physical and social contexts of daily life; the interplay between behaviour and its contextual influences can be thought of as an “energy culture”. Behaviour-based energy interventions aim to impact demand through influencing some aspect of energy culture - what people have, think, and/or do. Understanding how a program does (or doesn’t) work requires an understanding of changes in these elements of energy culture. This paper presents and tests a set of instruments that evaluate household energy culture before and after an intervention. Findings indicate that the proposed instruments are consistent with the conceptual variables they were designed to measure and have strong predictive validity. This work highlights the potential for reliable and valid methods to complement traditional measures of program effectiveness, providing deeper learning into how interventions lead to savings. Such insights can support program improvement, and ultimately increase the impact of behavioural interventions.

Authors: Ford, R; Karlin, B; Frantz, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: International Energy Program Evaluation Conferences
• Host title: International Energy Policies and Programmes Evaluation Conference
• Journal: International Energy Policy and Programme Evaluation Conference
• Publication date: 2016-05-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-05-03