Climate Culture Index 2023 - Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Behaviors

Internal Summary of Results

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?
• Adoption
  • Reported adoption of the behavior
    • Example: Do you currently get your electricity from community solar?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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?

Core results

Table 1

Highlights

• Many behaviors aren’t foreign to people: more than a quarter of the population has considered adopting seven out of eight IRA behaviors

• There are “winners and losers” in terms of the appeal of behaviors:

  • Insulate your home appeals to people – there is a high degree of interest a strong interest in a program that would help add insulation and high belief that people should insulate their homes. People understand the benefits of insulation. Plus, nearly half say they have insulated their home in one way or another.
  • Relative to other IRA behaviors, heat pumps dryers show the least traction: low consideration, low program interest, and low self-efficacy. It is possible that people don’t fully understand how heat pump dryers operate, as indicated by low perceived personal benefit.

• More than half of the American population believes that people should adopt the IRA behaviors. However, there is a significant variability between behaviors in normative beliefs:

  • While 57% of the population believes that people should be purchasing a heat pump dryer, that norm jumps to 92% for insulation

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

Highlights

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.

• Electric vehicles: we observed more than 9 pp increase in the proportion of people believing that people should adopt the behaviors, indicating a growing norm around driving an EV.
  • In addition, while consideration to get an EV dropped slightly, reported adoption increased. Our consideration indicator is not too far off from polling done by Pew Research Center: 42% say they would be very or somewhat likely to seriously consider purchasing an electric vehicle the next time they’re looking for a new car or truck.
• Rooftop solar: proportion of the population that believes that people should install rooftop solar increased by almost 20 pp. In 2023, more than 76% of US adults people say that people should install solar. While the intention to purchase an EV has stayed the same, the intention to install solar has gone up by 10 pp, indicating a growing interest in the technology.
  • More than 42% of surveyed adults reported that they have considered rooftop solar for their home. Our results are somewhat aligned with recent findings from Pew Research Center: 39% of homeowners have given serious thought to solar in the past year
• Community solar: among IRA behaviors, community solar scored the lowest on reported self-efficacy indicator, coming only above purchasing carbon offsets from the 2021 Index. Given low to moderate consideration score, our finding indicate that community solar is a fairly new concept to most people and not as familiar as other behaviors studied.

Table 3

Highlights

According to Climate Change and Social Vulnerability in the United States: A Focus on Six Impact Sectors report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the most severe harms from climate change fall disproportionately on racial and ethnic minority communities communities who are often least able to prepare for, and recover from, heat waves, poor air quality, flooding, and other impacts.

For example, with 2°C (3.6°F) of global warming, Black and African American people are:

• 34% more likely to currently live in areas with the highest projected increases in childhood asthma diagnoses; and
• 40% more likely to currently live in areas with the highest projected increases in extreme temperature related deaths.

With 2°C (3.6°F) of global warming, Hispanic and Latino people are:

• 43% more likely to currently live in areas with the highest projected reductions in labor hours due to extreme temperatures; and
• About 50% more likely to currently live in areas with the highest estimated increases in traffic delays due to increases in coastal flooding.

Given this federal acknowledgment of the significant and disproportionate effect of climate change on some of America’s most socially vulnerable groups, our findings offer insights into the state of psycho-social indicators and predictors of climate action in these communities. To fully meet the goals of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), it will be critical to promote public engagement from all segments of the population.

Highlight findings from Table 3:

• Across all IRA behaviors, Black or African American people and Hispanic people report higher average intention to adopt the behaviors when compared to the US population as a whole and high-income households
• For 7 out of 8 behaviors surveyed (the exception here is home insulation), a higher proportion of Hispanic people believe that people should adopt the IRA behaviors when compared to the population sample
• Similarly, For 4 out of 8 behaviors surveyed, a higher proportion of Black or African American people believe that people should adopt the IRA behaviors when compared to the population sample

December 2022 data from Climate Change in the American Mind survey indicates that many Americans have not heard much about IRA with most registered voters (57%) saying they have heard either “a little” (24%) or “nothing at all” (33%) about it. While demographic groups least likely to say they have heard “a lot” or “some” about the IRA were Black Americans (27%) and Hispanic or Latino (38%), these same groups are among the most likely to “strongly” or “somewhat” support the IRA after reading a description about it: Black Americans (78%) and Hispanic or Latino (67%).

Methods

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

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.

Correlations between demographic and psychographic predictors and program interest

Further exploratory results showed that program interest for the behaviors is moderately correlated with perceived self-efficacy to mitigate climate change and frequency of having discussions about climate change with others. In contrast, core demographic measures (for the exception of age, where older age is negatively correlated with interest) show no to weak correlation with the programmatic interest.

Correlations between program interest for the behaviors

Correlation results indicate that there may be opportunities to “cross-sell” IRA behaviors: interest in one program is a strong predictor of interest in others.

Figure 3: Regression coefficients from linear models regressing intention to perform each behavior on listed variables

• The greatest unique predictors of intention to adopt IRA behaviors (when adjusted for other variables in the model) are the respondent’s confidence in their ability to adopt the behaviors (self-efficacy), the belief that other people are also adopting the behaviors (empirical expectations), and the belief that other people around them believe that people should be adopting the behaviors (normative expectations)
  • In our past work, we also found support for the notion that believing that others are engaging in high impact behaviors (installing solar panels, contracting for green energy, purchasing carbon offsets, and driving an electric vehicle) is associated with intention to do so in the future
  • Taken together our results indicate that behavioral interventions which increase the belief that others are engaging in the behavior and boost a person’s self-efficacy are more likely to be effective at increasing intention than solutions that narrowly appeal to political or climate beliefs
  • In contrast, political orientation and climate beliefs are weak or insignificant predictors of intention to adopt the behaviors.
• The majority of other demographics, including education, household income, ethnicity, and Hispanic origin show inconsistent and largely insignificant effects
• Older age (55+) appears to be a moderate and negative predictor of intention to engage in all of the behaviors tested, for the exception of intention to purchase an electric vehicle (which shows insignificant effects of age).