Making green easy: increasing sustainability investments in homes by decreasing the ‘hassle’

Panel: 8. Buildings: technologies and systems beyond energy efficiency

Author:
Renee Kooger, ECN part of TNO, The Netherlands

Abstract

To achieve national and international climate goals on energy savings, home owners need to adopt sustainability measures in and surrounding their homes. Notwithstanding the efforts of public and private institutions, incentives to increase green investments in households have not taken flight.

One of the reasons is the persistent focus on financial and technical incentives, which do not tackle the psychological obstacles. An important example of these psychological objections considers the ‘hassle’ that people experience or associate with sustainable investments around the home. The Groen & Gemak (Green & Easy) project identifies and tackles this ‘hassle-factor’. We developed and tested propositions for green investments combined with a factor of ‘hassle-reduction’ For instance: attic isolation in combination with a service to clean the attic. We did this is in close corporation with homeowners, local governments and private organizations. The goal of this project is to persuade more home-owners to install sustainable measures around the home by introducing market ready, hassle free solutions-to sustainable homes.

We started out with an initial questionnaire to identify incentives and obstacles for taking sustainable measures. Based on these results we developed initial propositions for green and easy sustainable investments. After testing these, we fine-tuned these to market-ready offers. In this paper we will discuss results of each step and how we came to the final attractive, green and easy propositions for home-owners.

This research is innovative in its approach, which is a synthesis of the home-owner’s perspective on sustainable renovation and practical knowledge of private parties in the field of sustainable renovations. This research provides new and valuable insights in the impact of the hassle-factor in sustainable home renovations which can help other researchers, policy makers and private organizations by describing ways to overcome this obstacle.