I am a policymaker and interested in how to implement efficient nudges

Welcome to this area of our tool. You are a policymaker, we have a bunch of resources for you! More will be added as the NUDGE project finalises its results.

To design effective interventions/nudges, it is necessary to understand which factors determine people’s intent to reduce heating related energy consumption. As a result of a large survey with 3129 respondents from 29 European countries, 6 important factors could be identified and ranked according to their impact. The three most important ones are:

Designing information campaigns and policies that directly address the customers is important to increase the perceived behavioural control (e.g., enabling easy and low-threshold access to information on how to achieve a specific goal; encouraging action by showing examples and enabling customers to take informed decisions). Additional suggestions of concrete and practical measures such as lowering the temperature by one degree, switching off heating in unused rooms etc. can have a positive impact on habit formation and thus facilitate behaviour change.

If the European and national level is too far away from the customers to have a decisive influence, it is essential to use policy measures to address intermediary actors (such as energy service companies or energy utilities) and to hold them responsible, where practicable, to increase the perceived behavioural control of customers. Possible measures could include additional information on invoices or promoting the introduction of smart meters.

To allow customers to make informed decisions, consumption data must be available to them in a timely and accessible manner so that they can directly observe the impact of the energy saving measures they take.

Emphasising the saving behaviour of others when attempting to reduce individual consumption can be an important component of possible measures. The current efforts to reduce Europe’s energy dependency and to handle the high energy prices offer an opportunity to closely link energy-saving behaviour with the individual’s contribution to this goals. Showing survey results, such as what percentage of people think energy conservation is important now, could be an important lever to reinforce the intent to reduce heating-related energy use.

The results suggest that strategies to positively influence environmental and financial issues can have a positive impact on attitudes toward reducing energy consumption. However, care must be taken to address fears of a loss of comfort – it is important to ensure that consumption reductions affect comfort as little as possible.

In addition, some further policy recommendations and pilot specific results could be obtained – COMING SOON:

People differ in their energy using profiles (including their motivations to use or safe energy) and therefore require different approaches to nudge them towards energy efficiency.

People’s motivation to change behaviour depends on the following six factors:

  • Perceived behavioural control,
  • subjective norm,
  • attitude,
  • personal moral norms,
  • willingness,
  • age.

Policy design shall make an assessment of the impact of policies on the various types and use a balanced policy mix (including various different types of nudging interventions) to successfully nudge people towards an efficient energy usage. As a result of a large survey with 3129 respondents from 29 European countries, 6 different profiles could be identified:

For more information: