Conservation Understanding and Behavior among Low-Income Consumers: Results from the Electric Education Trust Consumer Education Project

David Hungerford, California Energy Commission
Jerry Hipps and Colin Ormsby, WestEd

Keywords

Abstract

The California Public Utilities Commission established the Electric Education Trust (EET) Community Outreach Program to involve community-based organizations in the task of educating hard-to-reach consumers about the electric utility industry and the options available to consumers in the restructured electricity market.

The program allowed grantees to adapt their education activities to the specific language, cultural needs and learning styles of their constituents. An ongoing evaluation and feedback component helped the grantees improve their effectiveness by documenting changes in awareness, understanding, and action in both participants and non-participants in the target population.

Since the program operated through the 2000-2001 California energy crisis, its continuing evaluation provided a unique opportunity to observe and document changes in understanding of energy issues among the grantee organizations and the target population. The adaptive program design, although primarily intended for flexibility in educating different population subgroups, allowed the educational activities to be adapted to the rapidly changing energy situation. The evaluation design offered the unique opportunity to document changing perceptions, understanding, and knowledge as the energy crisis unfolded.

This paper discusses how consumer perceptions and education needs evolved as the grantees adapted their activities in response to the energy crisis. We focus on consumer interpretation and understanding of utility bills, perceptions of and myths about the energy crisis, and the impacts faced by the primarily low-income hard-to-reach community.