Interviews with tenants

An in-depth, semi-structured, face to face form of interview was employed. Questions were used to structure interviews based on a broad set of environmental or retrofit linked themes. The interview structure was developed by compiling a range of questions based on ‘Environmental Knowledge’, ‘Environmental Attitudes’, ‘Environmental Behaviour’, ‘Appliances’ and ‘Tenant Satisfaction with their home’, ‘Energy and Water Consumption’ (perceptions) and ‘Health and Wellbeing’ (see appendix 2 for a copy of the interview structure). The types of question were based on the same questions found in the DEFRA Report: ‘Report, questionnaire and data tables following Survey of Public Attitudes and Behaviours toward the Environment: 2007’ (2007). Questions regarding energy use behaviours were based on suggested energy saving tips provided by the Energy Saving Trust website (EST, 2008). Based on these energy saving tips issued by the Energy Saving Trust questions were designed to gauge the interviewees response and thus what behaviours were being conducted with regard to energy use. Interviews were also structured to gather information on the impact of the Technical and Informational Interventions on tenant knowledge, attitudes and behaviours, through specific questions which were included in the follow up interviews. The broad set of themes in the interview structure in conjunction with a large number of interviews, created a reservoir of data for subsequent synthesis and analysis of ‘baseline’ and ‘follow-up’ datasets.

Tenants responded to questions verbally and were also given the opportunity to discuss issues surrounding each theme, such as related rationale for behaviour, opinions, attitudes and perceptions. Prompts or further questions were used to clarify responses or understand tenant reasons or context surrounding responses. The purpose of the interview was exploratory so as to achieve an in-depth understanding of tenant energy use behaviours and surrounding themes. The flexibility in interviews allowed the tenant to express narratives which were not originally targeted in the interview framework, thus allowing a wide range of

experience and perspectives to be captured. This approach in conjunction with the considerable length and number of interviews in two phases, captured a large body of raw data. The volume of data and range of themes compensated for limited time available for research design to target specific information, by allowing targeted data to be extracted at a later stage when research design had been refined. Also, Gentoo Group had interests in gathering certain information from interviews such as aspects relating to tenant environmental knowledge, environmental attitudes and general environmental behaviours. Some of this data was used in Gentoo Group’s dissemination reports to the wider public (e.g. Gentoo Group, 2009). It is acknowledged that there are limitations to this approach, as tenants may not necessarily verbalise their actual behaviours. Nevertheless, the volume of interviews, along with a repeat of the same interview and acknowledgement of these limitations in the analysis, still provides considerable scope to offer credible contributions to knowledge.

Due to the restricted research schedule time was only permitted for a small number of pilot interviews, which were conducted with colleagues or friends. This helped to refine a number of questions and gauge the length of time required for interviews. Based on the pilots, interviews were scheduled to last 30 minutes to 45 minutes.

Interview Deployment

Interviews took place with 26 individual tenants each residing in their rented home. The interview schedule (i.e. when the interviews were arranged to take place) was based on the retrofit implementation designated by Gentoo Group. Retrofit installations (Technical Intervention) began in November 2008 and finished in early March 2009. Therefore baseline interviews took place in November and December 2008 and targeted households which had not yet been subject to Technical Intervention. The same individuals received follow up interviews approximately 12 months later (November and December 2009). These tenants were interviewed at approximately the same time of year 12 months later in an attempt to mitigate seasonal impacts on energy use, for example tenants utilising technology for space heating more in the winter and less in the summer. This 12 month time gap between interviews also allowed all tenants to adjust to the exposure of the Technical Intervention and allowed time for the researcher to deploy Informational Intervention 2: the written and verbal guidance on energy saving behaviour, to half of the total sample of 26 tenants.

Research Methodology

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Informational Intervention 2 was deployed in July and August 2009, leaving some time for tenants to adjust to Informational Intervention 2 before the follow up interviews. It is acknowledged that there may be limitations to the provision of written and verbal energy guidance during the summer months as tenants may not be as strongly motivated to save energy due to a reduced demand on space heating. However, due to the timescale of the project this was the only time at which Informational Intervention 2 could be deployed.

Recording Data

The semi-structured interviews asked the same questions of all the study’s interviewees. Interviews typically involve individual interviewees, but sometimes other people (household, or non-household members) were present during the interview. Some of these other people involved themselves in the interview by delivering responses or discussing issues with the interviewee or researcher, but data is only recorded from the individual interviewee (tenant).

Informational Intervention 1: researcher information provided through interviews with tenants, can also be considered an Informational Intervention because there is potential for tenants to ask questions or become informed by questions and/or discussion related to the issues which are being researched. The influence of the researcher as an intervention, thus inherently affects the entire sample involved in the research.

It is important to note that the data gathered only reflects statements for one single interviewee per household and other energy users in the household may express different responses to the interview. Other non-interviewed household members may carry out different behaviours in the household and therefore could have more influence on energy use through these behaviours. For example, in the group of tenants involved in this study in the case of couples, women are often responsible for washing clothes and drying clothes, so a man being interviewed will ask women about this behaviour as they do not conduct these behaviours and thus do not have knowledge to answer the question. Questions also aimed to capture information on the tenants’ perception of their general environmental behaviours or behaviours related to energy use.

The findings are representative of tenant verbal responses to interview questions or related discussion. However, these verbal responses may not reflect actual behaviours or changes in behaviours in reality. Actual behaviour may require further verification (e.g. through energy monitoring equipment) and this was beyond the scope of this research project. Although it is not possible to confirm that tenants’ verbal responses reflect actual behaviours, the research questions were designed to observe inconsistencies in responses, where possible, by asking related questions or rephrased questions at other points in the interview. Part of the data analysis involved identification of likely reasons for changes or non-changes in behaviour, and this process also helps to identify the validity of verbal responses as other likely motivations for changing behaviour related to energy use that may not relate to verbalisations.