• Energy Research

The average price bias choice quasi-experiment is designed to elicit consumers’ perceptions about different pricing schemes. The experiment aims to correlate the findings with participants’ characteristics, potential behavioural biases and the participants’ financial and environmental literacy levels. The experiment consists of five discrete key sections: 1) a section about participant’s demographic data, 2) a small set of questions related to behavioural biases, 3) a set of questions related to financial literacy, 4) a section with questions related to environmental literacy and 5) the choice experiment about price perceptions. Section 5 presents a hypothetical scenario about the participant’s yearly energy consumption and several pricing tariff options. The participant has to choose a pricing tariff they think is the most cost-effective. There are six (1-6) broader cases, each including four subcategories (a-d). The further the case is from the beginning, the more complicated it is. The implementation of the experiment is as follows: Step 1. The participant first receives the following message: “Assuming that your yearly energy consumption is exactly 6,000 kWh, which one of the following tariffs would you choose as the most cost-effective?” Step 2. Each participant will be asked to participate in only 2 cases (all subcategories of each case are included). A case will be randomly chosen from cases 1-3 (simple case) and a second random choice will be made from cases 4-6 (complex case). Thus, all participants will answer a simple and a complicated set of questions. Step 3. The participant receives the first set of choices. If the participant answers correctly, he receives the next subcategory's choice set. If he answers false, he gets the next set of choices within the same subcategory. Thus, as soon the participant answers correctly, he skips the following set of choices and moves to the next subcategory. For a participant answering correctly, this will be a short survey. However, for someone answering wrong, the survey will last longer. More information can be found on the public deliverables of the EVIDENT project https://evident-h2020.eu/deliverables/. More specifically, the experiment's theoretical framework and motivation are described in deliverable D1.2 Assessing behavioural biases and financial literacy, in section 5 while the final design is reported in D3.2 Implementation of preparatory actions for RCT, surveys and serious game.

The EVIDENT serious game explores consumer behaviour in response to a malfunctioning home appliance. Specifically, it examines how consumers approach decisions to repair or replace a broken home appliance and the impact of behavioural biases on these decisions. There are two key aims addressed within the EVIDENT serious game. 1) Determine the impact of socio-demographic factors, environmental literacy, and financial literacy on consumer willingness to pay for the repair of home appliances. 2) Determine the impact of information and education mediated through a serious game on consumer in-game and real-world repair/replace decision-making. The serious game itself is a life-simulation game in which users are tasked with maintaining their virtual home while ensuring their avatar remains comfortable (i.e. basic needs such as hunger, warmth and hygiene are met) while monitoring their financial and energy consumption. Within this game, users learn that an appliance has malfunctioned, and a repairperson is called. Users must then determine how best to proceed by entering a negotiation with the repairperson. The experiment consists of the following sections: 1) demographic information; 2) financial literacy; 3) environmental literacy; 4) serious game. The game receives as input the replies of the participant on the demographics information section to provide a personalized gameplay experience. Replies regarding participant's age ("What is your age?"), role ("Which of the following apply to you?"), income ("What is your household's annual income?"), gender ("Which character would you like to play with?") and family status ("How many people live in your home (including you) - Children") will be used to adjust players' avatar, starting amount of money, size of the house, age of the player and the negotiation process with the repair person. The negotiation process differs based on the participants' role ("Which of the following apply to you?"). In this question, the participant can choose one of the following replies: 1) I am a homeowner, 2) I am a tenant (i.e. I pay someone to rent my accommodation), 3) I am a landlord (i.e. I receive payment for accommodation from someone else). Participants who rent (2) or are landlords (3) will be assigned to an additional in-game scenario to explore the unique context in which their energy decisions are made. Random allocation to a role will be applied for participants who select multiple options (i.e., homeowners who are also landlords). More information on the EVIDENT Serious Game Experiment can be found on the public deliverables of the EVIDENT project https://evident-h2020.eu/deliverables/. More specifically, the serious game implementation design is described in deliverable D2.3 Serious game implementation design, the design of the experiment is reported in D2.2 Optimised Protocols Design, and the experiment preparatory actions are described in D3.1 Specifications of preparatory actions for RCT, surveys and serious game and D3.2 Implementation of preparatory actions for RCT, surveys and serious game. Finally, the EVIDENT serious game can be found in the following locations: EVIDENT Website: https://evident-h2020.eu/seriousgame Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.CERTH.EvidentSeriousGame App Store: https://apps.apple.com/gr/app/evident-serious-game/id6447255106 EVIDENT Platform (participation in the experiment): https://platform.evident-h2020.eu/sessions/participate_session/1560d6e6-732a-470c-807a-c70472d51c53

Energy efficiency lies at the very core of policy interventions for energy security, energy poverty and climate change, while it also is promoted by technological innovations and investments. However, it seems that these technologies are not adopted by consumers at least to the extent that the assumption of rational behavior would predict. The EVIDENT project aims to study individuals’ decision-making process on energy consumption decisions, understand their habits and based on the research’s insight propose novel energy policy frameworks. This work aims to present the EVIDENT platform, which is being developed in the context of the project. The platform provides a series of crowdsourcing tools, such as polls, questionnaires, and serious games, trying to understand the behaviour of EU citizens on energy consumption issues and how their behavioural patterns correlate with their financial literacy level.