Electric messaging guide | Rewiring America Want to make your electric communications more effective? Download our short and sweet guide!
Electric messaging guide | Rewiring America
An electric communications guide to elevating the decisions that make the biggest emissions impact. JUST GIVE ME SOMETHING MEANINGFULLY ELECTRIC TO DO! ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 1 THE ONE-PAGE OVERVIEW Reduce, reuse, rewire! The watt and the why of this work Making good climate decisions is hard. We live in systems built on fossil fuel infrastructures, designed to emit. Pushing against those systems requires time, energy, patience, resources, and understanding. How do we help people who are worried about the climate crisis -- and this is 64 percent of Americans, according to a 2023 Yale survey -- cut through the smoke to make the best decisions they can with the limited time they have? And how can we make electric choices part of this decision set? At Rewiring America, we know that 42 percent of our energy-related emissions come from how we heat and cool our homes, heat our water, cook our food, dry our clothes, and power it all. Our founder Saul Griffith often talks about these as the five big electric switches we need to make -- swapping out the fossil-fueled stoves, water heaters, heating and cooling systems, and vehicles that make up this 42 percent, and replacing them with electric versions. That swap is what we refer to as "home electrification" or "household electrification." We have a huge opportunity as Americans to take meaningful climate action right now in our own homes. But home electrification doesn't occur to most people when they think about what to do first to address the climate crisis. In survey after survey, people pick a range of other options, like recycling or going vegetarian, as their most important climate actions.1 This is largely because highly efficient, effective, electric home appliances are a new tool for emissions reduction work -- we have better electric alternatives than we've ever had before. We also have the math to demonstrate how much of a positive impact those appliances can make. I don't know what it is, but I love it! 2 BIG LITTLE BUYS But how can we get the word out to folks? Griffith often wins over crowds in webinars and conversations by explaining, "Just make these big decisions well," or, "When your fossil fuel machine breaks, replace it with an electric one," or "Don't sweat the small stuff." But how effective are these heuristics? For example, are these messages effective at cutting through the noise of everyday life to reach busy people? Are they only for people who can afford to purchase expensive new home appliances? Can they convince people to shift their understanding on what to prioritize? Can they take the place of the corporate greenwashing concept of the individual carbon footprint? In partnership with researchers at Heatmap and the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), we set out to unpack some of these important questions. With Heatmap, we chose to focus on how aware the public is about home electrification in general, as well as their opinion of specific electric home appliances. What we found was that while awareness of the term "household electrification" has risen over the past few years -- from 27 percent in 20222 to 48 percent this year3, there's still a lot of work to do to reach full public understanding. With BIT, we focused our work on the most effective way to appeal to people's sense of personal agency. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is one of the most well-known catchphrases to spur environmental awareness from the last century. But to keep pace with the weight of the choices that need to be made at scale this century, we'll need a more powerful call to action. We think we've found some promising ones. We hope you find these electric insights as valuable as we do. ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 3 THE CHALLENGE OF LOW ELECTRIC AWARENESS Of course I care, I'm just not aware! The study results are clear: when it comes to public awareness about home electrification, there's a lot of work to do. In an online survey of more than 5,000 people in the U.S., Heatmap News and Rewiring America found that more than half (51 percent) of respondents had never heard of "household electrification" -- either in the media, their community, or among friends and family. That's a ratio echoed by the Behavioral Insights Team, which found in a separate survey of 6,000 self-described "climate-conscious" people that less than half (46 percent) knew what "home electrification" meant or what steps they'd need to take to accomplish it.4 In addition, only 10 percent of those surveyed by Heatmap thought having a mostly or all-electric home (no gas, oil, or propane) was the most important action they could take to confront climate change -- despite 42 percent of energy-related emissions in the United States coming from how the 129 million households in this country heat, cool, and power our homes, and the transportation we use to get around. 51% of respondents had never heard of "household electrification" 74% of respondents had heard about the need to "go electric" However, there was a silver lining: close to three quarters (74 percent) of those surveyed by Heatmap said they had heard someone talk about the need to "go electric." That opens the door to further research -- and taps into existing research on choosing language carefully as a tool for public outreach when it comes to climate awareness. 4 BIG LITTLE BUYS WHAT WE DID Frame, test, electrify! We wanted to know if we could go big on the big decisions, while also teasing apart a few supporting factors that go into making those big decisions. For example, people often feel confused about when it's the right time to get rid of their gas appliances. It was important for us to clarify that they don't have to throw out working fossil-fueled home appliances before the end of their lifespan. But they do have to be ready to replace them with electric ones as soon as they conk out. Put simply: When it dies, electrify! We wanted the messaging to convey that these are high-value decisions, made once, that reduce your decision fatigue and make your life better. With our partners at Behavioral Insights Team, Rewiring America polled climate-conscious people who had not yet purchased any of the following electric home appliances: an electric vehicle (EV), solar panels, heat pump, or induction stove. The goal was to test two of our commonly used messages to measure whether they made people feel capable of researching and picking electric appliances for their home. It also tested whether the messages increased people's interest in doing so. The TL;DR: Both messages increased self-efficacy and motivation to purchase electric technologies for climate-concerned Americans. The first message: "Upgrade to the best: Get electric next!" was effective for all populations, and showed the largest gains in increasing self-efficacy among high-income individuals. The message was paired with educational content about how to replace older, broken appliances over time. ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 5 Framework Big decisions... Quantitative Big decisions for high-impact climate benefit Made once Temporal Made once As needed Language for people "The five big decisions" "Big little buys" "One time!" "Get electric next" "When it dies, electrify!" The second message: "One time, huge impact," was also effective for all populations, and showed the strongest gains in increasing interest among non high-income individuals. The message was paired with educational content focused on "a few big, `set it and forget it' decisions," as well as concrete examples of how much money could be saved and how emissions could be reduced. Notably, both messages increased feelings of capability to research and select heat pumps and induction stoves, two lesserunderstood technologies that researchers said are ripe for additional public education. My actions are meaningless, but gimme a heat pump! Both messages increased interest in going electric, even among those who said they didn't believe individual actions could impact climate change. GO DEEPER AT REWIRING.LINK/3AW0ZGA 6 BIG LITTLE BUYS That ease your decision-making... And make your life better. Cognitive burden Quality of life improvement So you don't have to think about it all the time Better things Ease of use Reduced costs Improved health "Set it and forget it" "Don't sweat the small stuff" "Focus on the big things" "Upgrade to electric" FIRST MESSAGE SECOND MESSAGE Actual ads! ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 7 RECOMMENDATIONS Reframe to rewire! The studies point to an opportunity, and a challenge. People are more willing to take actions that they believe to be high impact. But they are often misdirecting their efforts because they are mistaken about which actions are truly meaningful when it comes to climate change. Effective messaging needs to clearly, concisely, and repeatedly remind people that they have the power to make a big positive impact, with a few, concrete, high-value actions. It's even better if those messages have the added bonus of reducing the cognitive load (i.e., effort) needed on a daily basis, such as: "One-time, huge impact." The goal is not to disparage important actions with lowervalue emissions reductions -- but instead, to highlight where people have lots of power to make big decisions that both lower their emissions and reduce decision fatigue. While cost can be a barrier to entry, (hopefully less so with each new rollout of Inflation Reduction Act upfront discounts) making the case to cost-aware would-be buyers that they will be making a big investment on something that has a big impact -- on health, on the environment, or on their future, can be a compelling motivator. 8 BIG LITTLE BUYS MAGNETIC MESSAGING Our top takeaways 1 Next Electric Frame electrification as a next choice, and an upgrade. Reduce people's stress in feeling they have to replace their gas machine immediately. Encourage people to prepare ahead of time to replace their broken gas machine with an electric one. MESSAGING "Get electric next." AUDIENCE Everyone, but especially high-income audiences. ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 9 2 One-Time Decisions Reduce cognitive fatigue, and focus on delivering impact by making a few big choices. Break down overwhelming choices into concrete, manageable actions. MESSAGING "One time, huge impact." AUDIENCE Everyone, but especially lower-income households. 10 BIG LITTLE BUYS 3 Reduce Decision Fatigue Use very clear, simple messages to highlight the importance of using people's time to make the highest-impact, single decisions to slash emissions. Remind people not to sweat every single micro-decision. MESSAGING "Set it and forget it." AUDIENCE Everyone. ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE | REWIRING AMERICA 11 1 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214851120 2 Consumer Understanding of Electrification (November 2022) - Unpublished. U.S. nationally representative survey, n=1754. Rewiring America. 3 The Heatmap poll of 5,202 American adults was conducted by Embold Research via online responses from August 3 to 16, 2024. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. 4 The Behavioral Insights Team study of 6,014 American adults was conducted via Predictiv, BIT's online platform for conducting surveys and randomized experiments, between July 29 and August 8, 2024. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful for the insights and help of everyone who made this research possible: Heatmap News; the Behavioral Insights Team: Sheena Mirpuri, Anna Keleher, Lindsay Mehta, Elliot Hoffman, Rosario Ramos, Kirstie Paul, Laura Callender, Micah Melia. Rewiring America team: Carla Burns, Nicole Bode, Geneviève Biloski, Chloe Yeo, Natalie Bomberry, Felicia Feaster, JahAsia Jacobs, Sarah Lazarovic, Emily Owens, Courtney St. John, Cora Wyent, Harper Yi, and many others. 12 BIG LITTLE BUYSAdobe PDF Library 17.0 Adobe InDesign 19.4 (Macintosh)