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This document provides an overview on energy consumption and energy consciousness in the nine European countries that form the Energy Conscious Consumers (ECO2) – consortium: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and Portugal. Segmentation Analysis and is grounded in the nine country reports provided by the ECO2 national partners. The Finnish partner, the Consumer Society Research Centre at the University of Helsinki, compiled the report on the basis of the national individual reports.
The main purpose of the ECO2 Segmentation Analysis report is to provide guidelines for consumer recruitment on the ECO2 platform. To achieve this, we synthetized background information on energy use and energy consciousness within each national frame and produced knowledge about relevant themes which will help us to provide relevant content for the ECO2 platform users. The segmentation and recruitment work package will inform consumer engagement to ensure their diversity. Ultimately, our goal is to enable fast and controlled upscaling of the pilot phase of testing the ECO2 platform. We propose practical guidelines for consumer recruitment to the ECO2 platform at the end of this report.
The comparative study on consumer segmentation is built on country reports provided by the nine ECO2 consortium partners. The country reports were based on the information and materials produced by national organizations monitoring energy consumption and organizations promoting energy consciousness, previous and ongoing EU projects (such as ENERGISE, ENTRANZE, NATCONSUMERS, ODYSSEE-MURE and USmartConsumer) as well as academic studies and industry reports and studies on energy consumption and energy consciousness. In addition, the country reports were validated through national expert interviews. This interview data enriched the reports and provided deep reflections on the national energy consciousness efforts. ECO2 partners searched for and compiled these materials.