CalPlug - Behavioral Interactions and Feedback

The proposed project will involve conducting a thorough review of prior results for behavioral intervention experiments for residential customers. The review will compare the effectiveness of various techniques, including how energy data is presented and which in‐home devices are used. The emphasis will be on lessons learned, in terms of feedback mechanisms, how the program was rolled out, and how its effectiveness was monitored and assessed. Particular attention would be paid to results suggesting interventions for low‐income households, and specific barriers to their effectiveness.

Behavioral policies and interventions are an integral part of reducing residential greenhouse gas emissions. This report reviews the current literature on behavioral interventions designed to reduce or shift residential energy consumption. In total, the abstracts of 1,473 scientific articles, reports, and conference proceedings were coded on nine aspects. CalPlug coded 1,302 papers as relevant to the overall topic. The abstract coding was used to identify the studies that were most important to the project goal. CalPlug focused on empirical studies from California and the U.S. to find behavioral intervention strategies that could potentially be applied in SCE’s service territory. Meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and reports were also considered. Papers describing theories of behavioral change were reviewed to better assess intervention strategies and understand empirical results. About 16% of the relevant papers (N=204) were coded in more detail using the full text to identify important aspects of the studies, such as study design, intervention strategies used, and outcome.