Harnessing behavioural insights to tackle fuel poverty
THE CHALLENGE
Cadent Gas is the UK's largest regulated gas distributor, supplying gas to homes and businesses across the country, and operating the nation's most extensive natural gas distribution network.
Cadent Gas receives funding from the Government’s Vulnerability and Carbon Monoxide Awareness allowance, which is used to deliver services to vulnerable people. They wanted to ensure that they understood the lived experiences of vulnerable people in fuel poverty, as well as their levels of gas safety awareness. Additionally, Cadent were keen to learn which of their communications strategies were the most successful in driving positive gas safety behaviour change.
THE IMPACT
To truly understand who our vulnerable audience is and the challenges we face, we wanted to assess the challenge from the inside out, by speaking to vulnerable people themselves and from the outside in, by analysing the media landscape that talks about this issue.
Our top priority was to ensure we could access this hard-to-reach group to ensure their voices were heard and considered for Cadent Gas’s 2025 strategy and beyond. Our behavioural experts designed a survey that was simple, engaging, and accommodating to individual needs. We surveyed over 1000 respondents living in fuel poverty in Cadent’s priority areas, across the country. We gathered insights on this audience’s attitudes, motivations, and behaviours towards gas safety, as well as their experiences living in fuel poverty during a cost of living crisis.
But no one lives in a media bubble and this audience would also be impacted by how these topics were being portrayed in the media and on social media. So we used digital research tools to analyse how the public and the media portray fuel poverty and carbon monoxide poisoning.
We analysed this data to create an insights playbook with recommendations across Cadent’s business.
Our insights included:
Positioning Cadent Gas as a thought leader and trusted voice in the gas safety industry: our data showed that Cadent is highly trusted by vulnerable customers to provide gas safety information.
Identifying partnership opportunities with other trusted influencers in the fuel poverty space like Martin Lewis, to boost Cadent's credibility in this space.
Identifying the optimum medium for gas safety behaviour change campaigns: people were more likely to buy a CO alarm following a door drop leaflet.
New content opportunities that focused on family and friends to drive engagement.
Finally, our insights showed that this audience approved of Cadent’s proposed funding splits for their VCMA priorities. This bolstered Cadents' 2025 -2030 strategy with proof points that it was designed with the customers in mind.
The Results
Our efforts provided Cadent Gas with actionable insights that were incorporated into their business planning for the upcoming year. The findings were also presented at a key industry conference, equipping gas providers with data-driven strategies to better address fuel poverty and carbon monoxide safety. The results also indicated that Cadent Gas and GNOs are highly trusted to deliver gas safety information and Cadent can confidently be a thought leader in the sector, driving impactful change across the industry.
The results will inform Cadent’s Winter campaign by helping design targeted communications aimed at groups most likely to be affected. Additionally, the insights provided valuable data to guide the allocation of funding for their VCMA allowance projects in the coming years.