Overall approach: The three STAVE groups deal with the same issue: smart meter (“LINKY”) and electricity savings. A fraction of the French population (250,000 homes) has recently been equipped with Linky by ERDF (the national utility) as a test sequence before the equipment is generalized to serve the whole French population (35 million homes). Participants were drawn from a list of the test population, provided by ERDF. One rural and two urban groups were engaged. The STAVE groups’ composition reflects the ERDF test population: older persons and lower socio-economic status in the rural area, younger and higher socio-economic status in the urban area. A balance between men and women was kept in each group. None of the participants had previously been engaged in focus groups.

Overall approach: All three German STAVE trials deal with the issue of energy using at home. The main reason for the German policy partner to choose domestic energy consumption as policy issue is that in terms of climate protection this sector has the highest relevance among the consumption-related sectors of the Climate Protection Concept under development at that time. This reason went together with the fact that policy makers had the impression to know more about mobility behaviour and how to change it than about energy-related domestic behaviour. Regarding domestic energy use there was the expectation that citizen groups could generate useful new findings with high policy relevance. Relying on the assumption that the domestic energy use of homeowners and tenants as well as people with and without children is different the following group composition was agreed:

• 1 group of tenants (households with children) (STAVE 1)
• 1 group of tenants (single and couple households without children) (STAVE 2)
• 1 group of homeowners (households with children) (STAVE 3)

Overall approach: The policy issue was the National Thermal Rehabilitation Program, and this only affects blocks or flats. Thus, group participants were composed of urban population living in block of flats (condominiums) as owners. Tenants have not been considered in the study because their low level of interest for thermal house insulation

• 1 group of citizens over the age of 35 years and no social problems (STAVE 1).
• 1 group of citizens under the age of 35 years and no social problems (STAVE 2).
• 1 group of citizens with social problems (unemployment, low-income families, retired person, single parents, etc.) (STAVE 3).

Overall approach:

• The policy issue for STAVE 1 in Spain was the Agenda21 and the commitment of the city towards sustainability. In this context, shopkeepers were considered a key actor by the policy partner (as they can play a relevant role in the city’s sustainability). Thus, the first STAVE intervention consisted of a group of shopkeepers from a specific commercial area in the city of Barcelona identified by the City Council (“snow ball” from a shopkeepers association in the area). All these shopkeepers sell quite different products: ice-creams; ecological soaps and cosmetics; house clothes; house curtains; mobile phones; canopies; etc. All are small shops.
• Energy saving at households and smart meters were the policy issues in STAVE 2, 3. Therefore, two citizen groups were selected according to a clear segmentation criterion: a group with smart meters at home (STAVE 3), a group without it (STAVE 2). The smart meters were installed the week before the first STAVE meeting by the City Council Energy Agency. All participants were homeowners with children, living in buildings with similar constructive and climatic features, in the same urban district of BCN (according to the Energy Agency’s needs).

Overall approach: The substantive policy issues of the group discussions were all related directly to the development of policy for climate-neutral Värmland by 2030. Specifically the issues chosen were: 1) Transportation (main issue), 2) Consumption in general, 3) Electricity consumption. All STAVE interventions were carried out with:

• A selection of citizens with the following specifications: age over 18, with all or some responsibility for purchase in the family, and the group should be mixed with regard to gender, age, and socio-economic status.
• Each group comprised: differences in age and income; household with singles, couples, families, single parents; varying occupations including: unemployed, employees, self employed, retired persons and students. Participants lived in flats and own houses, and represented both the countryside and the city.

Overall approach: The substantive policy issue for the UK STAVE trials was consumers’ understanding of, and shopping behaviour towards, household kitchen appliances that are known as ‘white goods’ (e.g. washing machines, fridge, toasters, etc.). This choice was made during consultations between the UK research team and the policy partner based at the Centre of Expertise on Influencing Behaviours, DEFRA. Specifically, the UK policy partner was interested in consumer reasoning, everyday behaviour and expectations concerning produce durability and reuse, product lifetimes, and the purchase of second-hand products. The policy officials expressed a specific interest in white goods because of a lack of existing evidence on consumer practical thinking around these appliances, and a lack of clarity as to what might be viable policy options in this area.
For the first UK STAVE group, the participants had to meet the criteria of being home owners, with a household income of above £45,000. Four of them had to have purchased a kitchen appliance in the last 2 years, and the other four had to have owned at least one kitchen appliance for at least 5 years. The STAVE 2 and STAVE 3 groups were run “in parallel” during November-December 2011, using the same venue, and facilitation and stimulus methods. In response to DEFRA’s stated interest in people’s behaviour at “moments of change” (getting married, splitting up, moving into a new home together, becoming single again, having a baby, retiring etc), we recruited the participants for the second and third groups on the basis of having either experienced a big life change of this nature during the previous 6 months, or anticipated such a change during the following 6 months.
DEFRA also expressed interest in how people at the lower socio-economic levels behaved, so we recruited in order to create socio-economic comparisons between STAVE 2 and STAVE 3. STAVE 2 was recruited from standard ABC1 categories and STAVE 3 from C2DE. Both groups were recruited with the objective of achieving a gender balance and the presence of at least one person per group with an ethnic background. STAVE 2,3 participants were informed that the project was trying to better understand how people make decisions about shopping, and in particular about the purchase of white goods (i.e. refrigerators, cookers, washing machines etc.).