Table_1_Tackling Energy Poverty Through Behavioral Change: A Pilot Study on Social Comparison Interventions in Social Housing Districts.pdf

Behavioral Economics has in recent years played a key role in informing the design of non-price interventions aimed at promoting energy conservation behaviors in residential housing. Some of the most influential contributions of the discipline in an applied setting have centered around the development of norm-based interventions. The success that these interventions have had in specific contexts presents an opportunity to exploit them as tools for tackling a prevalent type of poverty at the EU level: energy poverty. Recent contributions to the literature highlight the role of inefficient energy behavior as a significant driver of this particular type of poverty, which is characterized by an inability to afford the basic energy services necessary to guarantee a decent standard of living. Therefore, the effectiveness of norm-based interventions in vulnerable populations merits further investigation to determine whether this approach can suitably address the behavioral components of energy poverty by promoting efficient energy consumption and conservation efforts. This study reports on a pilot conducted in an exemplary social housing context (located in Bolzano, Italy) with the aim to assess the effectiveness of social comparison interventions in energy vulnerable groups. Our investigated cohort covers an initial small sample of apartments with a large representatives of elderly individuals and other energy-vulnerable groups. Using a design that combines appeals to injunctive and descriptive norms embedded within In-Home Devices (IHD) in recently retrofitted homes, our objective is to set a basis for the assessment of effectiveness of these types of interventions in social housing populations. Our study seeks to provide useful methodological insights to policy makers on how to effectively design behaviorally informed interventions aimed at tackling energy poverty. Despite the current data limitations, our results do seem to suggest that uniformly applied norm-based interventions may have potentially backfiring effects in small-scale implementations. Therefore, they suggest that attention needs to be paid to household composition and pre-existing levels of consumption, when designing behavior-change interventions in these groups.JEL Classification: C93; D03; D04; D12; D19; D91; Q40.

近年来，行为经济学在指导旨在促进住宅能源节约行为非价格干预措施的设计中扮演了关键角色。该学科在应用场景中的诸多重要贡献，主要集中在基于规范的干预措施的开发。这些干预措施在特定环境中的成功实施，为将其作为解决欧盟层面普遍存在的贫困类型——能源贫困——的工具提供了机会。文献的最新贡献强调了能源行为低效作为导致这种特定类型贫困的重要驱动力，其特征是无法负担保障基本生活水平所需的基本能源服务。因此，基于规范的干预措施在弱势群体中的有效性值得进一步研究，以确定这种方法是否能够通过促进高效能源消费和节约努力，适宜地解决能源贫困的行为成分。本研究报告了一项在典型的社会住房环境（位于意大利博尔扎诺）进行的试点研究，旨在评估社会比较干预措施在能源脆弱群体中的有效性。我们的研究队列包括最初的小样本公寓，其中包含大量老年人和其他能源脆弱群体。通过结合最近翻新的家庭中嵌入的规范性规范和描述性规范的呼吁，我们的目标是为基础研究这些类型干预措施在社交住房人群中的有效性奠定基础。本研究旨在为政策制定者提供有价值的方法论见解，以了解如何有效地设计旨在解决能源贫困的行为指导干预措施。尽管当前数据存在限制，但我们的结果似乎表明，在小型实施中，统一应用的基于规范的干预措施可能具有潜在的副作用。因此，他们建议在设计针对这些群体的行为改变干预措施时，需要关注家庭构成和现有的消费水平。JEL 分类：C93；D03；D04；D12；D19；D91；Q40。