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Warm Homes Technical Report: Social Drivers

Executive Summary

1 Introduction

2 Home Heating and Energy Efficiency in New Zealand

3 Home Heating Social Drivers

4 Energy Efficiency Social Drivers

5 Programme Participation Social Drivers

Appendix: List of Key Informant Interviews

References

1 Introduction

1.1 The Warm Homes project

The Warm Homes project has been set up by the Ministry for the Environment to examine ways to encourage New Zealand households to move to cleaner heating sources and increase household energy efficiency, and overall to encourage warmer and healthier homes.

In particular, the project is investigating and developing possible national programmes that work with regional and local government, energy suppliers, manufacturers and communities to achieve these aims against the background of two key policies.

1. The National Environmental Standard (NES) for air quality – this requires councils to improve air quality progressively to the level of the national standard by 2013. For home heating the most relevant standard is that for particulate matter (PM₁₀), which requires average ambient concentrations of no more than 50 ug/m³ over a 24-hour period, with a maximum of one exceedance per year. [See: www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/rma/user-guide-draft-oct05/] Currently, nearly 30 communities around the country have air pollution levels that breach these standards as a result of households being heated (in part or in full) by burning wood or coal in inefficient or non-clean-burning appliances (over 40% of New Zealand households) (Ministry for the Environment, 2005).
2. The National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy 2001 - this strategy established a target for all pre-1977 houses to be retrofitted with a suite of cost-effective energy efficiency measures within 15 years (ie, by 2016). Within this target it is expected that by 2012 150,000 houses occupied by lower-income households will be retrofitted (EECA and MfE, 2001). Currently it is estimated that at least half a million houses have no insulation or significantly sub-standard levels of insulation. [Ministry for the Environment (2005): this survey indicated that 29% of households (out of a total of 1.44 million in 2004) did not have ceiling insulation, or respondents did not know. Most houses without ceiling insulation also have little of no wall or floor insulation. In addition, the ceiling insulation installed in many houses is old and sub-standard.]

At this stage there is no specific policy objective for adequacy of home heating, and therefore no corresponding target date for achievement. We do know, however, that there are adverse health effects associated with living in uninsulated cold houses, [These have recently been quantified through the Health and Housing national study. See: www.wnmeds.ac.nz/academic/dph/research/housing/insulation.html] and that there are a significant number of houses in New Zealand where average temperatures fail to reach the minimum temperature recommended by the World Health Organisation. [Based on longitudinal studies conducted by the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ). See, for example, Isaacs, 2004.]

The Warm Homes project is also influenced by the Sustainable Development Programme of Action (2003), which includes not only some important key principles, such as "seeking innovative solutions that are mutually reinforcing" and "using the best information available to support decision making" (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2003: 10), but also a major work stream on energy, the overarching goal of which is "to ensure the delivery of energy services to all classes of consumer in an efficient, fair, reliable and sustainable manner" (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2003: 16–18).

The Ministry for the Environment therefore wishes to provide specific advice to its Minister and to the Minister of Energy on how to encourage changes to New Zealanders' home heating practices in ways that are most likely to achieve results, but more particularly, that optimise the social, environmental and economic outcomes desired.

1.2 Project objectives

The objectives of this project, as set out in the original Request for Proposals, are to:

• understand the drivers behind the choice of home heating type
• understand the drivers behind the uptake of energy efficiency measures
• investigate the necessary incentives (financial or otherwise) required to achieve behaviour change
• make recommendations as to the most appropriate way to achieve behaviour change.

Initial discussions with Ministry staff confirmed that the primary focus of this work is to provide the Ministry with a good understanding, from the householder's viewpoint, of what the main social drivers are for home heating behaviour, and how the Government can most effectively provide incentives to generate sufficient change in householder home heating choices to meet its national air quality targets and reduce levels of 'energy poverty' (the incidence of home heating deficits). 'Incentives', in this context, may be financial or otherwise, and involve a combination of 'carrots' (eg, information, persuasion, loans, grants, inducements) and 'sticks' (eg, regulatory measures).

1.3 Social drivers defined

An important step towards designing an appropriate Warm Homes programme is to understand the drivers behind New Zealanders' uptake of home heating and energy efficiency improvements – or their reluctance to do so. Social drivers are the mix of influences and factors that result in people behaving the way they do. Understanding social drivers is a vital part of designing effective policies and intervention programmes.

1.4 The approach

The original Request for Proposals envisaged two phases of work. Phase 1 was to provide a comprehensive scoping of what is already known about the social drivers underpinning New Zealanders' existing heating patterns and their attitudes to home heating, and to identify critical gaps in information that might form the focus of a national survey of households. Phase 2 was to conduct such a social survey (if found necessary) and to develop appropriate incentives for home heating and energy efficiency.

In the proposal submitted it was pointed out that a national survey was inappropriate on methodological grounds as well as on the grounds of timing and cost. Consequently, the structure of the research has been as follows.

Phase 1 has, as intended, focused on providing a comprehensive scoping of what is already known about the social drivers. The research covers a review of literature and extensive discussions with over 30 key practitioners and experts in this area. Information gaps identified will be followed up during Phase 2, as necessary, and where relevant will be signalled to the Ministry in the Phase 2 report. The Phase 1 research is reported in this document.

This Phase 1 report should be treated very much as work in progress. Its purpose is two-fold. Firstly, it satisfies the contractual requirement to bring the Ministry up-to-date with progress that has been made on the investigations. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it sets out explicitly the manner in which the conceptual framework has been developed and applied to these investigations, so that others can follow the structure of the analysis that has been undertaken.

Phase 2 focuses on the development of options for incentives, and improvements to existing incentive programmes. Some of these options have been tested with community stakeholders in a series of workshops, and as a result a set of recommendations has been developed on a national Warm Homes programme. These are presented for consideration.

Phase 1 of the investigations has involved the following approach.

Development of a conceptual framework

A conceptual framework was developed to guide the project's investigations (see section 1.5 for details).

An international literature review

An international literature review was conducted to identify social drivers from overseas experience, and to highlight the range of approaches (and their critical success factors) adopted overseas to address 'warm homes' issues. The literature review focused on the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. The review used team members' resources, Google, and university databases (including Current Contents Connect, Infotrac, and Web of Science) to identify relevant literature and websites.

Analysis of New Zealand experience to date

An analysis of New Zealand experience was conducted to establish the nature of New Zealand's home heating and energy efficiency market, to identify social drivers, and to explore the range (and success factors) of incentive programmes. Specifically, this analysis included:

• an overview of home heating and energy efficiency trends in New Zealand
• a market analysis, including identifying segments and key variables adopted by various players in the market
• case study analyses of the facilitated programmes of energy efficiency/home heating undertaken in New Zealand over the last decade.

Case studies included:

• Christchurch's clean air initiatives
• Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) residential grants
• community network approaches - Community Energy Action, Waitara, Huntly
• the Housing New Zealand Corporation retrofit programme.

Key informant interviews

Key informants were selected with the aim of covering a range of stakeholder perspectives, including:

• representatives of householder groups or communities (eg, community trusts, property investors)
• regional and local government agencies involved in existing programmes to incentivise change (eg, Environment Canterbury, Christchurch City Council, Nelson City Council)
• community and social agencies with an interest in public health and environmental quality (e.g. community and public health, general practitioners)
• firms providing products and services for home heating and dwelling insulation (eg, appliance suppliers, insulation installers)
• agencies involved in generating and providing independent information on home heating and insulation (eg, Building Research Association of New Zealand – BRANZ).

A full list of key informants interviewed during Phase 1 is given in the Appendix.

The aim of these interviews was to gather information and opinions from a range of people who have been actively involved in addressing issues of cleaner heating and warmer homes. The semi-structured interviews covered questions relating to:

• trends (social, demographic, economic, technological, policy and institutional, etc) considered likely to affect the chances of achieving sufficient change in appropriate home heating practice by 2013
• the experiences and perceptions of the most significant drivers influencing householder decisions on home heating in various segments of the market
• ways of segmenting the market for home heating improvements to target particular initiatives
• views on the most effective ways to incentivise behaviour (towards cleaner forms of heating and warmer, healthier homes) in each of the various segments of the market
• any critical uncertainties or information gaps hindering policy development in this area.

In each case the key informant was sent an email message giving background information on the investigations and indicating the scope of questions to be covered in the interview. In many cases, more detailed questions, considered particularly relevant to an individual's experience, were also pre-circulated. Most interviews were conducted by telephone, but some were face-to-face, and in a few instances several informants were interviewed together.

1.5 The conceptual framework adopted

With the primary focus of this work being an investigation of social drivers of individual and household behaviour – particularly choices and practices related to home heating – the research team adopted a conceptual framework which focuses on the range of drivers that influence individual decision-making in response to public policy initiatives.

In simple terms, the framework assumes decision-making influences as a complex of five types of drivers, which interact in various contexts, as follows.

1. Influences within the individual's immediate, day-to-day circumstances (eg, the local climate; the extent of air quality problems experienced locally; the type of dwelling tenure; household size; the level of household debt; the amount of discretionary household income; the impact of energy prices; household spending priorities; attitudes to risk and reliability in electricity supply; the value attached to convenience in lifestyle; the attitudes to frugality; personal expectations for comfort).
2. Influences in terms of individual capabilities, particularly the level of knowledge, understanding and skills to make decisions to change (eg, recognising that a problem exists; recognising that their behaviour contributes to the problem; making the connections between heating levels and health; recognising that there are alternative choices; understanding the consequences of their choices; literacy and numeracy skills needed to receive and interpret policy messages and marketing messages; coping with technical information and conflicting information; receptiveness to certain channels of communication; cultural perceptions about home heating).
3. Influences from the public policy environment (eg, the strength, clarity and consistency of policy messages about particular policy objectives; confusing messages about multiple objectives; the perceived effectiveness of specific public policy programmes aimed at changing behaviours – including implementation methods and the blend of 'carrots' and 'sticks'; perceptions of the degree of multi-agency involvement and mutual reinforcement; perceptions of the adequacy of resources for implementation; eligibility for or barriers to the financial assistance packages on offer; level of compulsion perceived).
4. Influences from the community and the immediate social environment (eg, the involvement of local community groups in advocating certain behaviours; the strength and integrity of community leadership on home heating issues; the presence of trusted champions, information sources or sources of advice; the involvement of people and organisations who are known and trusted, the influence of close friends and neighbours who form part of the immediate social network; the role of 'word of mouth').
5. The orientation of home heating and related commercial services (eg, the development of the residential energy efficiency sector; the promoters of single technologies or whole-house approaches; the integrity and standard of service of providers; the availability of appropriate financing packages).

This framework demonstrates a conception of incentives and social drivers that goes well beyond the narrow focus of market incentives. Because of this, it has the potential to inform a wider understanding of market transformation processes of the kind that have started to occur in New Zealand, and that will need further reinforcement if the policy targets are to be achieved.

The relevance of this type [This framework is adapted from the Ottawa Charter, first developed as the basis for practical policy implementation in the field of public health in the late 1980s.] of framework derives from three main attributes.

• Its origins: the promotion of public health on a population-wide basis has to contend with a complex set of social drivers, which span both private benefits and public goods. Such promotion is also working in a policy domain characterised by multiple objectives (personal wellbeing, public health and economic productivity). This is similar to the situation with the Warm Homes project, which seeks to achieve changes in behaviours that are consistent with a public 'cause' aligned with private benefits.
• Its multi-agency character: the framework invites consideration not only of the social drivers that influence people's behaviours, but also the range of agencies and organisations that have roles to play in creating and maintaining various social drivers. Effective promotion of a public 'cause' never relies on a single agency. Instead, strategically selected people and organisations each need to do what they are most effective at, rather than having a single agency trying to change the world on its own. Getting the multiple policy objectives on enough agency agendas [This applies to central government agencies (eg, Ministry for the Environment, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Health, Department of Buildings and Housing), as well as local government agencies, decentralised government agencies such as District Health Boards, community groups and private sector organisations operating locally.] is fundamental to achieving change.
• Its use to develop comprehensive strategies for behaviour change: to gain effective leverage you need a range of strategies across the five areas, which complement and reinforce each other. This involves identifying the (type of) organisation(s) or individuals best able to develop each part of the strategy.

This framework has been used to carry out certain specific analytical tasks:

• to help structure the analysis of New Zealand's practical experience of incentive programmes (case studies)
• to guide the review of incentive programmes (overseas and New Zealand literature review)
• to help structure key informant interviews.

The research approach adopted here combines both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, by ensuring the research team was able to draw on the insights developed internationally and locally about the drivers that influence individual decision-making, while remaining open to data that might expand, or even contradict, the prior evidence.

The framework also provides the basis for communicating the findings of these investigations: the combination of social drivers that is most relevant to each segment of the home heating market, and how these combinations might translate into effective programmes for each market segment. To reflect this, the results are presented as a set of annotated tables which categorise the social drivers in terms of the five main categories of the conceptual framework, and whether the drivers encourage or inhibit the types of behavioural change required to meet the stated policy objectives. Sections 3 to 5 therefore contain a sequence of tables in the following layout:

Table 1.1: General layout of preliminary findings

1.6 Structure of the report

Section 2 provides some of the evidence base for the analysis of social drivers in the form of a review of home heating and energy efficiency trends in New Zealand. More of the evidence base is referred to in the notes in sections 3 to 5.

Sections 3 to 5 present our findings on social drivers relating, respectively, to the adoption of cleaner heating technologies, the adoption of improved energy efficiency in dwellings (particularly insulation), and participation in publicly funded programmes that seek to promote such changes to householders. As noted above, the results are presented in table form, followed by discussion of each table cell.