Energy Labelling Consumer Journeys

Descriptions

**Please note this is an Award Notice not a call for competition** This contract has been awarded via Energy and Climate Change Behavioural Science Framework Agreement. Reference: CR20116. Background The Energy related Products team are in the early stages of developing future policies to maximise energy and carbon savings from energy-related products (ErPs). ErPs are products that use energy, or that have an indirect impact on energy consumption, ranging from household appliances such as washing machines, fridges etc. to more commercial/industrial products such as servers, motors etc. As announced in the Prime Minister's Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution, the Government plans to launch a world class policy framework for energy-related products later this year which will set our ambition for pushing products to use less energy, resources, and materials, in turn saving carbon and helping households and businesses to reduce their energy bills with minimum effort. As part of our policy development, we seek not only to understand the factors influencing consumers purchasing decisions, but also how these factors interact with each other. We are using the framework for this piece of research as it is a behavioural insights project and we anticipate that the consumer journey mapping would identify consumers' purchasing decision behaviour, as well as identifying the barriers and enablers when buying the most energy efficient products. The outcome of this research will help to influence future policy design to make future policy as effective and universal as possible. We recognise the rise of online sales and social media playing a role in influencing consumers in their purchasing behaviours - we want a policy that would encourage consumers of all ages and socio-economic background to buy the most energy efficient product. We would also like to diagnose the barriers to and enablers of behaviour change, with the objective of identifying the most fertile ground for policy intervention, in order to maximise the impact on uptake of energy efficient products. Understanding how a consumer decides whether to pay for a higher upfront cost and what information other than the energy label influences their decisions will help us to design effective future policy, fit for 2021 (rather than 1993, when energy labelling was first conceived). As outlined in the Prime Minister's Ten Point Plan, we are aiming to launch a world class policy framework for energy-related products this year which will set out which energy-related products have the greatest carbon-savings potential and which policy levers we intend to use to realise these savings. Alongside minimum standards, influencing and changing consumer behaviour will form an important part of this framework.