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Decision-Ade: An Innovative Process for Segmenting U.S. Homeowners by Utility-Bill Botheredness and Budget Constraints

2015; American Society of Civil Engineers; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1061/(asce)ae.1943-5568.0000176

1943-5568

Randall A. Cantrell, Charles B. Sewell,

Sustainable Building Design and Assessment

There is a substantial body of literature linking energy efficiency to occupant behavior. This paper extends that literature by developing a process for segmenting U.S. homeowners into profiles, on the basis of their (1) level of utility-bill botheredness and (2) household budgetary constraints. This process, using these two lenses to view homeowners, is hereafter called Decision-Ade. It builds on and contributes to theoretical knowledge in the areas of (1) residential energy decisions, (2) marketing science, (3) the psychology of behavior change, and (4) emotional response modeling. The motivation for developing Decision-Ade is to understand whether utility-bill botheredness and budgetary constraints can be used to segment U.S. homeowners into unique groups, which in this paper are referred to as profiles. The empirical analysis confirms that homeowner segmentation is not only made possible through this process, but that it enhances the understanding of how homeowners make decisions regarding upgrades to their homes. A compelling aspect of this study is that its sample comprises more than 1,000 U.S. homeowners, which is a sample size larger than nearly each of the studies reviewed for this paper. By using a sample of this size, this methodology can be applied to other fields as well, providing information that advances basic knowledge and capabilities across multiple disciplines.