A Personalized Intervention for Household Emission Reduction Nested within a Theory-Driven Panel Study on Movers

Household energy use and travel behaviour are both related to characteristics of the built environment. Traditional cross-sectional and observational studies face limitations in inferring causality of said relationship and in capturing behavioural trajectories over time. Yet, understanding behavioural change is essential for fostering low-carbon lifestyles. To address these challenges, we developed a framework that integrates longitudinal data collection with interventional designs in a four-wave panel study following movers for one year. Relocation as a natural intervention is followed by a randomized controlled experiment which tests the effectiveness of tailored persuasive messaging through a web-application visualizing emissions and the impact of behavioural changes. Grounded in the ipsative theory of behaviour, the study examines changing behaviour in response to changing objective, ipsative, and subjective behavioural constraints. While longitudinal panels encounter recruitment challenges similar to cross-sectional studies, such as declining response rates, our study demonstrates how to increase the utility of the initial efforts. Furthermore, we show the value of tailored interventions and true experiments, an approach that is still uncommon in transport and energy research. This further enriches the collected data and allows for examination of how natural and experimental interventions interact to influence behavioural change.