Optimising Value Propositions for Energy Efficient Renovations

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The 2010/11 Energy Bill currently before Parliament includes provisions for a Green Deal designed by DECC to "encourage energy efficiency improvements paid for by savings from energy bills, avoiding upfront costs to households ...". UKERC has solicited research to "assess the design and effectiveness of new business models for household energy services provision, in the context of the Green Deal and other developments". Short of regulatory mandate, energy efficiency improvements can only occur if homeowners decide to undertake energy efficient renovations. The critical measure of 'effectiveness' for Green Deal-enabled business models is therefore whether they stimulate and facilitate homeowners' renovation decisions while increasing the conversion rates of prospective into actual renovators. 'Effectiveness' does not only mean profitable and financially attractive to UK homeowners. Human decision-making is complex; renovation decisions are no exception. Understanding multiple, pertinent attitudinal/behavioural antecedents, decision barriers, and intervening factors are essential for stimulating energy efficient renovations. Homeowners are customers for industry renovation service providers. The value propositions (bundles of product and service attributes offered by service providers to homeowners) are therefore integral to the success of the Green Deal.We focus on the attractiveness of existing and new product and service attributes offered to homeowners to support 'market-ready' activity by service providers following the Green Deal launch in autumn 2012. The involvement of B&Q as an industry partner in our proposal is crucial for ensuring our research is oriented around actionable findings. Only the involvement, practical experience, and ongoing market activity of an industry partner of B&Q's profile allows testing and evaluation of Green Deal-enabled value propositions during the project's 2011-2013 timeframe given the Green Deal's expected launch only in autumn 2012.Through our mixed-methods approach, we will:- develop a rigorous, integrated cross-sample research design to assess key attitudinal/behavioural variables, decision antecedents, and intervening barriers to UK homeowners' renovation decisions (10/11-6/12); - consolidate current knowledge and conduct in-depth qualitative interviews with homeowners in B&Q's current 2011 Pay as you Save rollout field trials, as well as homeowners in a matched control group (9/11-2/12);- measure homeowners' preferences under realistic market conditions through B&Q's planned 2012 field trials of Green Deal-enabled value propositions and, in parallel, measure homeowners' responses to a far wider set of value propositions through a large-scale discrete choice experiment on an independent random UK sample (7/12-12/12).- collect survey data on a comprehensive set of attitudinal and behavioural variables from all sampled homeowners generating a set of common variables to link samples and integrate field trial and choice experiment findings (7/12-12/12). - design a state-of-the-art quantitative model of real and potential choices of UK homeowners from different socio-economic backgrounds and regions, simultaneously with extra preference, attitudinal, and other latent variables (10/11-6/13); - integrate the renovation decision model into a market simulator tool for optimising value propositions, testing the impact of financial and pricing strategies, and evaluating marketing outcomes (2/13-6/13).- extensively transfer knowledge directly and indirectly to service providers and academia.