The responsiveness of households to energy demand management initiatives: Segmenting by household types

Segmentation is often a complex and costly process, which commonly involves identifying groups with differing attitudes and behaviours or demographics. However, the segments generated may not adequately explain differences between consumers, or it can be difficult to identify households for target marketing, which consequently makes it difficult to use segmentation in practice. In this paper we present segmentation by household types as a simple method of segmentation, that is accessible to non-profit organisations with limited resources, and can be employed using a secondary data set or with relatively simple data collection and analysis. Despite its simplicity, our findings show that this form of segmentation differentiates well between segments in terms of their actual electricity use, their past efficiency behaviours and preferences for efficiency programs. The results of focus groups and a survey of 4000 households reveal, among other things, the effect of having children and marital status on energy use and efficiency behaviours, the high curtailment but low investment behaviours of single parent households, and the low efficiency behaviours of share households.