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Energy Conservation Research of California's Utilities

A Meta-Evaluation

University of California, Santa Cruz

Dane Archer

University of California, Santa Cruz

Elliot Aronson

University of California, Santa Cruz

Larry Condelli

University of California, Santa Cruz

Barbara Curbow

University of California, Santa Cruz

Beverly McLeod

University of California, Santa Cruz

Thomas F. Pettigrew

University of California, Santa Cruz

Suzanne Yates

University of California, Santa Cruz

More than 200 evaluations of energy conservation programs conducted by California's four major utilities between 1977-1980 were reviewed and critiqued. In general, the evaluations were conducted in the marketing research tradition, were formative (rather than summative), and were dominated by nonexperimental surveys. Major threats to validity included:failure to consider secular economic and attitudinal trends, inadequate prior explication of key constructs, lack of random assignment, lack of appropriate comparison groups, overreliance on attitudes and self-reported behaviors as indices of conservation, and multiple unprotected statistical comparisons. Alternative evaluation techniques designed to reduce validity threats are presented, and a sample of the utilities' more recent work is assessed.

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