Changing energy behaviour – what works?

Behavioural Insights for Policy series: Evidence review 

Year: 2019 

Topic: Home retrofit | Energy saving 

Methodology: Literature review 

Author: SEAI Behavioural Economics Unit 

Summary: 

This report examines international evidence on what works for encouraging sustainable energy behaviours and recommends a number of behaviour change programmes that should be trialled in Ireland. It identifies potential behaviour change strategies to complement the delivery of SEAI's current objectives and programmes. An extensive search of journals, relevant websites, and grey literature was conducted to identify 176 relevant studies that utilised experimental methods. These studies were then used to estimate the energy savings generated by various behaviour change interventions. This review recommends that any behaviour change interventions trialled in Ireland must be evaluated using the most robust methods such as randomised controlled field experiments or quasi-experimental approaches.