BEHAVE. Meta-evaluation of communicative programmes aimed at consumers

Renée Bruel, SenterNovem, The Netherlands

Keywords

consumers, households, behavioural change, energy efficiency, policy instruments

Abstract

Changing consumers’ energy-related behaviour can significantly reduce their energy consumption. To this end, behavioural change programmes can use communicative, regulatory, and economic instruments. This paper mainly focuses on programmes using communicative instruments. When compared to programmes using economic and regulatory instruments, communicative behavioural change programmes aimed at consumers are:

relatively easy to set up and stop
less expensive
highly visible, with clear points of departure and are often suitable for media coverage.

Therefore, communicative programmes are rather popular among policy makers and programme managers. However, programmes are often set up without taking into consideration the lessons learned from similar programmes. Due to a lack of systematic evaluations, no readily accessible source presenting the success factors for these programmes is available. The BEHAVE project (financed under the IEE-scheme) will carry out a systematic meta-evaluation of behavioural change programmes. Based on the evaluation, the project will define key factors for developing successful behavioural change programmes. The programmes evaluated will come from a selection of EU countries. Several types of communicative programmes will be evaluated: educational programmes, mass media campaigns, feedback, personal advice, community network approaches and use of new ICT tools. This paper presents the content of the BEHAVE project.