Little previous research has examined the impact of champions on household energy efficiency and climate-change mitigation. Furthermore, the use of household champions as a policy instrument has also had little consideration. Using a sample of 2278 people drawn from the general population of Australia, we identify household “champions” of energy efficiency and climate change. We examine the characteristics of these champions, the types of households that have energy-efficiency and/or climate-change champions, and importantly the climate-related attitudes, behaviour and the behavioural intentions of households with and without champions. We find that attitudes, involvement, behaviours and behavioural intentions are significantly and meaningfully affected by both the presence of and type of champion present. Of note is that the presence of any champion in the household had positive effects on the extent of household energy-efficient behaviours. The findings suggest the importance of differentiating climate-change strategies to drive behavioural change depending on the absence or presence and focus of household champions. We describe 14 strategies based on education, information provision, communications, use of commitments, empowerment programs, and other tools that can be differentially applied across household types to support household members to become or develop as energy and climate champions.
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Morrison et al. (2026) studied this question.
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