Climate Culture Index 2023 - Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Behaviors
06 April, 2023
Study overview
Research goal
The Climate Culture Index tracks the state of leading indicators of behavior adoption and psycho-social states for climate-mitigating behaviors that are part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The following eight behaviors were part of this study:
- Complete whole-home energy retrofit
- Install a heat pump for heating and cooling
- Install solar panels
- Insulate home
- Purchase an Electric Vehicle (EV)
- Purchase a heat pump dryer
- Purchase a heat pump water heater
- Subscribe to community solar
Sample
We recruited 1,807 adults living in the US, quota sampled to match the US Census data in age x sex x ethnicity. The sample was additionally weighted using survey weights to be representative of the population in age x sex x ethnicity, Hispanic origin, household income, adult state and region population, and the segments of Global Warming’s Six Americas.
We over-sampled respondents from three sub-groups of the population (Black or African American people; Hispanic people; people with household income above $100,000/year) to make comparisons between psycho-social states across these sub-groups. See Table 3 for these comparisons.
Indicators
For eight IRA behaviors, we measured nine indicators identified as either important enablers or leading indicators of climate action. The survey instrument can be viewed here.
- Consideration
- Whether the person has considered adopting the behavior in the past
- Example question: Before taking this survey, have you considered getting an electric heat pump hot water heater in the last 12 months?
- Whether the person has considered adopting the behavior in the past
- Adoption
- Reported adoption of the behavior
- Example: Do you currently get your electricity from community solar?
- Reported adoption of the behavior
- Intention
- Reported intention to perform the behavior in the near future
- Example: How likely is it that you will have solar panels installed in the next 12 months?
- Reported intention to perform the behavior in the near future
- Beliefs that others have adopted
- Perceived number of others that have adopted the behavior (empirical
expectations)
- Example: Imagine 10 drivers you know. If you had to guess, how many of them do you think drive a fully electric car?
- Perceived number of others that have adopted the behavior (empirical
expectations)
- Beliefs that others should adopt
- Beliefs that other people should adopt the behavior (personal
normative beliefs)
- Example: Do you think that people should insulate their home?
- Beliefs that other people should adopt the behavior (personal
normative beliefs)
- Beliefs that others think people should adopt
- Perceived number of others that think one should adopt the behavior
(normative expectations)
- Example: Imagine 10 people you know. If you had to guess, how many think that people should use an electric heat pump hot water heater?
- Perceived number of others that think one should adopt the behavior
(normative expectations)
- Program interest
- Reported interest in participating in the program that helps adopt
the behavior
- Example: How interested would you be in participating in a program which helps you purchase an electric heat pump?
- Reported interest in participating in the program that helps adopt
the behavior
- Self-efficacy
- How confident is the person in their ability to adopt the behavior
- Example: How confident are you in your ability to use an electric heat pump dryer?
- How confident is the person in their ability to adopt the behavior
- Perceived personal benefit
- Perceived personal benefit as the result of adopting the behavior
- Example: How much do you think completing major energy-saving home improvements would benefit you personally?
- Perceived personal benefit as the result of adopting the behavior
Core results
Table 1
Methods
Taking “Insulate home” behavior as an example, here is how to read Table 1:
- Consideration
- Question: Before taking this survey, have you considered insulating your home in the last 12 months? [Yes or No]
- Interpretation: 35.43% of adults in the US say they have considered insulating their home
- Adoption
- Question: Have you insulated your home? [Yes or No]
- Interpretation: 46.16% of adults say they have insulated their home
- Intention
- Question: How likely is it that you will insulate your home in the next 12 months? [0%-100%]
- Interpretation: Among adults in the US, the average reported intention to insulate their home is 33.46%
- Beliefs that others have adopted
- Question: Imagine 10 households you know. If you had to guess, how many of them do you think have insulated their home? [0-10]
- Interpretation: On average, people guess that 5 out of 10 households they know have insulated their home
- Beliefs that others should adopt
- Question: Do you think that people should insulate their home? [Yes or No]
- Interpretation: 91.51% of adults say people should insulate their home
- Beliefs that others think people should adopt
- Question: Imagine 10 people you know. If you had to guess, how many think that people should insulate their homes? [0-10]
- Interpretation: On average, U.S. adults say 6 people they know think people should insulate their home
- Program interest
- Question: How interested would you be in participating in a program which helps you insulate your home? [0-10]
- Interpretation: Average interest in participating in a program which helps insulate one’s home is 5.50
- Self-efficacy
- Question: How confident are you in your ability to insulate your home? [5pt Likert, Extremely confident - Not at all confident]
- Interpretation: Average confidence to insulate a home is 3.34/5
- Perceived personal benefit
- Question: How much do you think insulating your home would benefit you personally? [5pt Likert, Benefit me a lot - Not benefit me at all]
- Interpretation: Among U.S. adults, the average perceived personal benefit of insulating a home is 3.78/5
Figure 1: A normative bubble
Across all IRA behaviors, there is a gap between what people believe (Beliefs that others should adopt; personal normative beliefs) and what they think other people believe (Beliefs that others think people should adopt; normative expectations). Individually, Americans believe that adopting these behaviors is important, however, they under-estimate how many other people believe the same. Since normative and empirical expectations were found to be strong unique predictors of intention to engage in the IRA behaviors (Figure 3), interventions that aim to increase uptake of the behaviors should normalize climate action by making these norms more apparent.
Table 2
Highlights
Table 2 combines core findings from Climate Culture National Index 2021 and the Climate Culture IRA Index 2023, offering a comparison of indicators across a range of climate behaviors. The survey instrument from the 2021 Index is available here. Key study results are here and here.
We did not measure Perceived community benefit in the 2023 Index.
Table 3
We over-sampled respondents from three sub-groups of the population (Black or African American people; Hispanic people; people with household income above $100,000/year) to make comparisons between indicators of behavior adoption and psycho-social states across these sub-groups.
Table 3 presents the differences in the behavior adoption indicators and psycho-social states between a particular sub-group and the national data.
Taking “Install heat pump AC” behavior as an example behavior and “Consideration” as an example indicator, here is how to read Table 3:
- Consideration
- Question: Before taking this survey, have you considered using an
electric heat pump in the last 12 months? [Yes or No]
- National: 33.35% of adults in the US say they have considered using an electric heat pump for heating and cooling
- Hispanic people sub-group: 30.90% of Hispanic people say they have considered using an electric heat pump
- Black or African American people sub-group: 35.57% of Black or African American say they people have considered using an electric heat pump
- Household Income $100,000+/year sub-group: 34.61% of people with household income $100,000+/year say they have considered using an electric heat pump
- Question: Before taking this survey, have you considered using an
electric heat pump in the last 12 months? [Yes or No]
Exploratory results
Figure 2: Program interest distribution
We asked people “How interested would you be in participating in a program which helps you [adopt behavior]?” on a 0-10 scale. The violin plot below shows the distribution of people’s responses; the red dot marks the the median program interest score for each behavior.
Based on the plot, IRA behaviors can be classified into three groups with highest median programmatic interest for a retrofit solution, insulation, and electric vehicle; and lowest programmatic interest for a heat pump for heating and cooling and a heat pump dryer.
The findings indicate a stronger programmatic interest in behaviors with potentially high-upfront costs: whole-home energy retrofits (which often include adding insulation and replacing one or more gas appliances with electric equivalences), electric vehicles, and rooftop solar. Possibly in part due to the high up-front financial costs of all three of these behaviors, we see a sizable gap between consideration and reported adoption.
