Behavioural Design for Affordability
Synopsis
The Behavioural Design for Affordability Task develops and tests behavioural approaches that help vulnerable households enrol in, and stay engaged with, the energy affordability and efficiency programmes they are already eligible for.
The aim of the Task is to give programme designers and implementers a practical, validated framework for removing the behavioural barriers that keep eligible households from reaching the support available to them, tested through real-world pilots in participating countries.
Overview
Task Duration:
Phase 1: September 2026 – August 2028
Participating Countries:
Canada, Ireland, Netherlands and the United States
Task Leader:
Ondrej Kacha, The Behaviouralist
ondrej@thebehaviouralist.com
Latest from Behavioural Design for Affordability
New Users TCP Task to tackle the energy support participation gap
A new Users TCP Task Behavioural Design for Affordability will develop and pilot behavioural design methods to help more vulnerable households enrol in, and stay engaged with, the energy
Behavioural Design for Affordability Publications
Subtasks & Deliverables
Energy affordability remains a persistent challenge across Europe and North America, and the most severe impacts are concentrated among low-income and otherwise vulnerable households. Around 48 million households in the European Union (11%) report being unable to keep their homes adequately warm, energy arrears in the United Kingdom have reached historically high levels, and nearly one quarter of households in the United States report being unable to pay an energy bill in full. These pressures carry measurable public costs, including increased respiratory and cardiovascular illness, excess winter mortality, poorer mental health, and higher demand for health and social services.
Governments, regulators, utilities and local authorities have responded with extensive support: bill assistance, social tariffs, energy cheques and income-based payment plans on the one hand, and weatherisation, insulation, appliance upgrades and low-carbon heating support on the other. Despite this policy infrastructure, participation and sustained engagement remain persistently below potential. Many eligible households do not access the support available to them. This is often not because support is absent, but because it is difficult to discover, difficult to claim and difficult to complete. Common barriers include low awareness, limited trust in institutions, fragmented or unclear eligibility rules, administratively burdensome application processes, stigma attached to income-qualified programmes, and the perception that a no-cost offer may be “too good to be true”. The scale of the gap is illustrated by the United States’ Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program: in 2024, approximately 5.9 million households were enrolled out of an estimated 35.5 million eligible households, a participation rate of roughly 17%.
A growing body of evidence shows that behavioural approaches, such as simplifying processes, improving communications, working through trusted intermediaries and designing effective defaults, can significantly improve enrolment, completion and ongoing engagement. Behavioural frameworks and toolkits already exist, including EAST, MINDSPACE and the OECD BASIC toolkit, but they are not yet consistently applied or adapted to the specific context of energy affordability and support programmes. As a result, many programmes are built around policy and administrative requirements and are insufficiently optimised for the real-world journeys of households experiencing financial stress, digital exclusion, language barriers or low trust in institutions.
The Task will develop and validate a behavioural design framework for improving enrolment, completion, and sustained engagement in energy support programmes for vulnerable households. It will review existing evidence and frameworks, develop a practical behavioural framework for programme designers, and test the framework through real-world Programme Labs in participating countries. The intended outcomes are to help more eligible vulnerable households access affordability support, remain engaged with energy efficiency initiatives, and benefit from programmes that deliver better outcomes per money spent.
The Task pursues four objectives:
(i) Develop a supportive behavioural framework for the design and delivery of energy support programmes for vulnerable households;
(ii) Deploy the framework in four different energy support programmes to test its effectiveness on enrolment and engagement;
(iii) Actively engage stakeholders, including programme designers, implementers and policymakers, through consultation and co-creation activities, ensuring that the research delivers meaningful societal impact;
(iv) Collaborate with other Users TCP Tasks, including the Hard-to-Reach Energy Users Task and the Behavioural Insights Platform, to create synergies and increase the impact of Users TCP work.
The Task is structured around three research questions:
1. What are the key behavioural barriers and drivers, at the communications, programme design and system levels, affecting vulnerable households’ enrolment and engagement with energy support programmes?
2. How are behavioural insights currently applied in the design of energy support programmes? Which behavioural best practices, tools and frameworks do programme designers use, and where do the largest behavioural gaps and opportunities lie?
3. Can a new behavioural framework effectively address the identified gaps and increase the efficacy of energy support programmes? Does applying it lead to measurable increases in enrolment and engagement among vulnerable households, and improvements in programme awareness, trust in programme administrators and customer satisfaction? Do practitioners find the framework practical, feasible and user-friendly?
Success will be assessed through measurable improvements in programme performance in the demonstration pilots, including increased enrolment and completion rates, higher participation in efficiency upgrades, and improved indicators of customer awareness, trust and satisfaction, measured through programme data and participant feedback surveys where possible. Key outputs of the Task will be publicly available to policymakers, programme designers, implementers and individuals globally.
Overview of the steps we will take during the implementation of this Task
The Task is delivered through three strands of activity.
Work Package 1: Evidence base and framework development. The Task begins with a short literature review of the barriers and motivators associated with uptake and enrolment in energy support programmes among vulnerable households, alongside a review of existing behavioural design frameworks and tools used in public policy and service design. Where relevant, the review draws on evidence from other sectors that support vulnerable populations, including healthcare, education and social welfare, to identify approaches that may transfer to the energy context. The review builds primarily on existing systematic reviews and meta-studies, and combines traditional search tools with research platforms such as Overton.io and Elicit.org. Identified barriers and enablers are classified into three categories: communication aspects, programme design aspects, and system-level aspects.
The review is accompanied by ten semi-structured stakeholder interviews with programme designers and implementers, selected to cover a mix of organisational contexts, levels of experience with behavioural insights, and programme focus areas. The interviews establish which behavioural tools and frameworks are currently in use, the practical challenges of applying them, and what makes behavioural guidance genuinely useful. Findings from both strands are then synthesised into a practical behavioural framework, developed with input from a co-creation workshop with the Community of Practice and reviewed throughout with demonstration partners to ensure it is feasible and relevant in real programme contexts.
Work Package 2: Demonstration pilots (Programme Labs). Programme Labs are structured, collaborative pilots in which programme implementers apply the framework with hands-on support from the Task Leader. In each participating country, one or more delivery partners are recruited, such as utilities, energy agencies, government bodies administering affordability or efficiency schemes, or municipalities. Each Lab maps the programme context, identifies behavioural barriers and drop-off points across the user journey from awareness to sustained participation, co-designs targeted improvements to communications, application processes, defaults, timing, channel mix or support structures, and evaluates the results. Evaluation approaches may include experimental, quasi-experimental, pre-post and qualitative methods depending on feasibility, with the primary focus on programme performance indicators such as enrolment rates, application completion rates and participation in programme services. Structured feedback from partners assesses the usability, feasibility and perceived value of the framework itself.
Work Package 3: Capacity building and replication. A Community of Practice of programme designers, implementers, researchers and policymakers is convened throughout the Task, meeting at least four times to share interim findings, facilitate peer exchange, and provide structured feedback on the framework’s usability and transferability. Each Programme Lab is translated into a concise, publicly available case study designed to support replication. Country-specific policy workshops present the framework, pilot evidence and case studies to policymakers, regulators and senior decision-makers, with a focus on implications for programme design, funding decisions and consumer protection.
Overview of planned outputs
This Task will produce the following outputs:
– D1 Research Plan (month 1). Defines vulnerable consumers and details the literature review protocol, interview guide and operational model of the Programme Labs.
– D2 Behavioural Barriers and Enablers Database (month 3). Consolidated database of behavioural barriers and enablers affecting enrolment and engagement in energy support programmes, categorised by communication, programme design and system level.
– D3 Practitioner Insights Report (month 4). Synthesis of stakeholder interviews documenting the behavioural tools and frameworks currently in use, key constraints, and priority gaps and opportunities.
– D4 Behavioural Design Framework (month 6). Practical, user-friendly framework providing step-by-step guidance for increasing enrolment and engagement in energy support programmes.
– D5 Programme Diagnosis (month 6). Journey maps for each demonstration programme, identifying behavioural bottlenecks and opportunities across the user journey.
– D6 Implementation and Evaluation Plans (month 10). Description of the behavioural interventions to be implemented in each Programme Lab and the associated evaluation design, metrics and analysis plan.
– D7 Pilot Results Reports (month 19). Documentation of pilot implementation, evaluation results and lessons learned, including impacts on enrolment and engagement.
– D8 Case Studies (month 22). Concise, replication-oriented case studies summarising programme context, interventions, results and transferable insights.
– D9 Community of Practice Activities (month 21). Series of four structured knowledge-exchange and capacity-building workshops with programme designers, researchers and policymakers.
– D10 Policy Workshops (month 24). Country-specific workshops disseminating the framework and pilot evidence to policymakers and senior decision-makers, one per participating country.
Through these activities and deliverables, the Task aims to increase the number of eligible vulnerable households who enrol in and remain engaged with affordability and support programmes, and to increase the number of vulnerable households who adopt energy efficiency upgrades and technologies.