A Deeper Look into Participant Saving Patterns and Underlying Reasons to Enhance Targeting and Messaging

摘要

Program administrators across the country strive to achieve deeper savings through theirrnenergy efficiency programs. However, despite versatile marketing approaches and sophisticatedrnengineering modeling methods, participants often do not achieve the savings expected, and somerneven increase energy usage post-participation. Traditional impact evaluation results show howrnmuch energy program participants saved overall, but generally provide limited insight intornreasons for saving or not saving energy, or which participant groups save more or less.rnThis paper draws on the results from several research studies conducted in 2013 forrnPG&E’s Whole House program to demonstrate how analysis of energy savings patterns andrnreasons underlying those patterns can help unlock higher energy savings through informing thernfuture focus of the program design and implementation, including marketing and messagingrnstrategies.rnThrough leveraging survey efforts, secondary data sources, and multiple analyticalrntechniques this paper explores energy saving patterns and identifies factors for predicting thosernpatterns. The analysis classifies participants into “positive,” “negative,” and “neutral” saverrngroups and explores demographic, geographic, building, household, psychographic, projectspecific,rnand behavioral characteristics most predictive of each group.rnUnderstanding the mix of factors that drive energy savings allows for a more strategicrnselection of the program design elements and customer engagement tactics and can lead to thernachievement of higher savings. The value of this study spans beyond the Whole House programrn– the results are useful to energy efficiency program implementation and marketing teams acrossrnthe country, as they plan customer engagement strategies for their energy efficiency programs.