Keeping Up with the Joneses: Using Neighborhood Social Norms to Promote Energy Efficiency

November 10, 2009 2:00-3:30pm Eastern

What's It About?

Think people don’t really care about keeping up with the Joneses? Think again. Perceptions about others’ energy consumption are often more powerful in determining an individual’s conservation behavior than the prospect of saving money, yet people grossly underestimate the impact their peers’ behavior has on their own. In this webinar, you’ll learn how to leverage powerful social norms to improve energy efficiency.

CEE members have developed several innovative programs that leverage social norms to promote conservation and reduce consumption. During this Ask the Experts session, Bobbi Wilhelm of Puget Sound Energy (PSE) will describe how PSE has leveraged social norms to reduce customers’ energy consumption using tailored messaging about how their energy consumption compares to that of their neighbors. The Behavior Committee previously heard SMUD’s take on this type of effort; PSE’s program differs in that it focuses on dual fuel homes as opposed to electric-only as SMUD did. Carol Suhan of FortisBC will detail a decade-long program she developed around waste reduction using neighborhood social norms and will draw direct lessons that can be applied to the energy efficiency industry. Both presenters will detail how the success of leveraging neighborhood social norms was measured and evaluated in their programs.

What is Ask the Experts?

This webinar is part of the Ask the Experts series of free workshops presented in webinar format to help new or prospective efficiency program administrators tackle specific energy efficiency program issues. The format is both informative and interactive, so be sure to bring your questions.

Who Should Attend?

Ask the Experts is open to new administrators of energy efficiency programs, state regulators, and employees of CEE members. Contractors and consultants are currently excluded. Others may participate by personal invitation of CEE.

Anyone interested in learning more about the different ways in which social norms can be applied to programs to increase energy efficiency would benefit from this webinar. This webinar will detail two residentially-focused programs that focus on leveraging neighborhood social norms to promote behavior change and will focus on how these programs have been evaluated. This session will give participants a sense of how to approach social norm programs and how to apply the lessons learned from these sample efforts in developing and evaluating their own programs.