Preaching to the Choir: Are Repeat Participants Free Riders?

Panel: Commercial Buildings: Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

Author:
Jeff Erickson, Summit Blue Consulting, LLC

Abstract

Mature, long term energy efficiency programs can see customers coming back year after year for assistance and incentives. In some cases customers are changing behaviors based on the first project influence, and implementing these measures in similar projects. Repeated exposure to a message can make that message stick much longer than a single exposure. As a result, repeated participation can make for effective and efficient programs and can help produce lasting effects on the market. Programs need to be designed in a way to make maximum use of their resources. At some point, it will be more cost-effective to pull in new participants than to continue to provide services to a repeat participant. Regulators may push this issue by using free ridership rates to penalize programs and excluding distant past program activities from the definition of program support used to identify free riders. How can program managers and evaluators accurately distinguish between repeat participants who would implement the target actions now without program assistance and those that genuinely need program assistance? How should the savings generated by repeat participants be counted? How much attribution should be given to prior program efforts and how should that be determined?

This paper will discuss how two different utilities struggled with those critical questions. The paper will discuss methods for quantifying the influence of prior program experience, and for determining how to classify the savings attributable to the current and past program activities. The paper will discuss how regulators struggle with the concepts and what conclusions they reached.