Upgrading the energy label for dwellings in Flanders: an example of a behaviourally informed policy tool

Abstract

The energy performance certificate (EPC) is mandatory in the EU, aiming to enable prospective buyers and renters to compare dwellings in terms of energy performance. Flanders intends to improve its current EPC, by adding a label to the existing coloured scale and EPC score. Our research aimed to inform the Flemish Energy Agency by testing before releasing the new version of the certificate, thus being an example of behaviourally informed policies. A literature review of experiments on information framing in similar contexts established the background to the research. Given the evidence of the importance of information framing, we tested 10 versions of the new label on 224 respondents (N = 224). We verified two main hypotheses – the ‘normal distribution illusion’ and the ‘energy efficiency fallacy’. The former tested whether respondents assess too optimistically the dwellings in the red spectrum of the scale. The latter verified whether respondents focused exclusively on energy efficiency, ignoring the dwelling size or total energy consumption. Nudges tested to overcome these biases included social norm, anchoring and rescaling. Based on these results the label was rescaled, from the initial G-A to FA+. Rescaling corrects the overoptimistic assessment of the energy performance of label F.