Advocating energy efficiency with a proverbial approach

Panel: 1. Foundations of future energy policy

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Hans Nilsson, FourFact AB, Sweden

Abstract

Energy efficiency is a hard sell. We have all the good arguments about economy and environment but in spite of this still have a huge potential that is not exploited. Partly we are to blame ourselves because we have appealed to an economic sense that we have assumed to be the overarching reason for people to act. People, however, have a simplified way to react on a proposition. Research in behavioural economics show that we at first use a fast and automatic thinking, which is based on experience. This fast approach is the first instance to accept or reject new ideas. Since energy efficiency and its implications seldom have been experienced our arguments don’t pass the first hurdle.

The human mind is built to think in terms of narratives, stories. They create a framework for our motivation. Maybe we could bypass the first mind-test by appealing to other experiences than our own and do so by using really engrained knowledge such as laid down in proverbs, folklore and literature. Thereby either hope for an “aha”-experience of the fast thinking or for its remit of the issue to the slow and analytical thinking.

Depending on the biases people may have in their mind when they are searching for data and arguments we may have to design such a “proverbial approach” accordingly. The bias may have to do with representativeness or availability of data, but also to what we compare (anchor) data to or even with how strong our ties are to the object for the change (endowment).

Another and related issue is that our arguments and even physical design of energy efficient installations leaves many users blank. We do not understand them and then how can we desire and use them?

Finally we may have to put ourselves in the shoes of the users/buyers. What is on their mind? It might be something completely different from the unique features we argue in our USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of energy efficiency. We may have to figure out what would be the UBR (Unique Buying Reason).