Recruiting vulnerable householders into programs developed to assist them or improve their situation can be difficult. That’s because these householders are simply busy dealing with everyday life and don’t need yet another thing on their plate.
Sustainability Victoria (SV) wanted to find a way to address this in its recruitment practices for the Latrobe Valley Home Energy Upgrades program – a $5M Victorian Government solar and energy efficiency initiative, which offers low income and vulnerable householders energy efficiency upgrades worth up to $4,500.
The goal of the program is to reduce energy consumption while increasing the thermal comfort of these homes.
What did we do?
To better understand how to recruit vulnerable audiences, BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) ran a randomised control trial with SV and two energy retailers.
The aim was to test if a behaviourally-informed phone script could increase interest and sign up among energy hardship customers (one of the eligible householder groups).
Intervention design
The intervention involved an SV employee reading one of two scripts to the 185 hardship customers in the final sample. Both scripts were developed by BWA and incorporated information about the program and the potential benefits.
Additionally, one of the scripts, the intervention script, included the behavioural techniques of scarcity, loss aversion, norms and making future consequences more salient.
What did we find?
Among households who were read the intervention script, 40% signed up to the program and 34% of households who were read the control script signed up. Although this improvement was not statistically significant, it suggests that the additional behavioural techniques may encourage some households to benefit from the program.