While conducting research for the report Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory learned that when it comes to promoting home energy improvements, language matters. It’s important to know how to improve a home’s energy efficiency, but it’s equally important to know what words to use and how to convey this information. 

People all make associations—either positive or negative—with words. Take, for example, the word “audit” in the term “home energy audit.” Most Americans have a negative association with the word, based on its association with taxes. The word “retrofit,” on the other hand, is more neutral, but can still confuse the average homeowner. The report suggests the terms “energy assessment” and “home energy improvement” are more descriptive and appealing replacements. 

The report cites Marcia Kadanoff, vice president of marketing at Recurve, who suggests that industry professionals use familiar terms when discussing home energy, such as connecting the work to remodeling or construction services. Using familiar terms helps homeowners associate the work with something they can easily visualize. 

The manner in which information is conveyed also matters. Social psychologists who accompanied home energy assessors on visits to prospective customers found that the assessors typically communicated their findings with “dispassionate, factual information based on the assessment results.” Consequently, fewer than 20% of the households that requested energy assessments followed up on the recommendations. 

So the psychologists trained a group of energy assessors in effective communication techniques, emphasizing the importance of eliciting commitment, using vivid examples, and focusing on loss aversion. They were taught to use an example such as, “The cracks around all the doors add up to a hole in the wall about the size of a basketball.” For expressing energy efficiency in terms of loss, an assessor might say, “Until you get the flue fixed, your hard-earned cash is flying right up the chimney.” Assessors that used these strategies were able to persuade 60 percent of their customers to follow their recommendations.

For a more detailed discussion on the behavioral research from this study, see Chapter 9 of Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements. 

Content for this Blog post courtesy of Mark Wilson, based on research in the Driving Demand report by Merrian Fuller et al., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.