​Contractor Training and Heat Pump Adoption

Last registered on June 22, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
​Contractor Training and Heat Pump Adoption
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018831
Initial registration date
June 05, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
June 15, 2026, 1:45 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
June 22, 2026, 10:16 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

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Primary Investigator

Name
Jenya Kahn-Lang
Affiliation
Resources for the Future
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jesse Buchsbaum
PI Affiliation
Resources for the Future
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PI Name
Erica Myers
PI Affiliation
University of Calgary
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-07-06
End date
2028-12-31
Keywords
Education, Environment & Energy
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
L1, Q4, Q5
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Our research question examines whether gaps in contractor knowledge and skills are a binding barrier to electrification and whether contractor training programs can help overcome these constraints. We will leverage Pennsylvania’s rollout of the federally funded Training of Residential Contractors (TREC) program. We will collect information about contractor heat pump installation and sales practices through surveys. We will randomly select some contractors and provide them with additional information, reminders, and incentives to encourage them to participate in this program. We will then evaluate the impacts of this encouragement on training participation, contractor knowledge, contractor sales practices, and heat-pump installation activity.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Buchsbaum, Jesse, Jenya Kahn-Lang and Erica Myers. 2026. "​Contractor Training and Heat Pump Adoption." AEA RCT Registry. June 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18831-1.1
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention is an encouragement to participate in a heat pump training program. Contractors who complete a baseline survey are randomly assigned to receive additional outreach about upcoming trainings and a monetary incentive to attend a training, while the control group receives no additional outreach or incentive from the research team during the intervention period. Control group contractors remain eligible to participate in the same publicly available trainings. This intervention is designed to increase training participation.
Intervention Start Date
2026-07-06
Intervention End Date
2026-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Self-reported heat pump installations (boolean, number, and percent of total HVAC or water heater installations), installations receiving low-to-moderate income rebates (from administrative data), self-reported heat pump sales, sizing, and installation practices
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
For sales and installation practices, we will analyze the shares of sales visits at which the salesperson provided information about heat pump water heaters and provided a quote for heat pumps. For heat pump sizing and installation practices, we will create an index from whether respondents say they use Manual J or load calculation software to conduct load calculations, use auxiliary heat in Stage 1 heating, switch over to back-up resistance heating at any point for cold-climate heat pumps with resistance heating and a compatible thermostat, conduct system commissioning, perform air balancing, purposefully upsize a heat pump for comfort, check or upgrade the duct work, check or upgrade the building envelope, and upgrade the thermostat equipment or optimize the thermostat settings. We will report these outcomes individually, with and without multiple hypothesis correction, and we will also combine them into a knowledge/behavior index following Kling et al. (2007). For robustness, we will also create these indices following Anderson (2008) and replace the open-response question related to heat pump sizing with a multiple-choice question response about using load calculation software and building characteristics.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Heat pump training attendance, baseline and follow-up survey response rates, spillovers to other companies in the region, whether respondents educate clients that the supply temperature will be lower, and the share of respondents that receive callbacks for heat pumps installed less than <1%, <2%, and <5% of the time
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The study employs a randomized encouragement design (RED). We first recruit a sample of contractors in Pennsylvania to complete a baseline survey on past installations by technology type, sales practices, heat pump installation practices, and firm characteristics. We then randomly assign geographic statistical areas ("metropolitan areas") to a treatment and a pure control group. Within each treated metropolitan area, we randomly assign contractors to either an encouragement group or a spillover group. The encouragement group receives information and a financial incentive to attend a heat pump training, conditional on a training being available in the metropolitan area, while the other contractors do not receive additional outreach. Because training remains available to all contractors, this design identifies the effect of training participation through experimentally induced variation in training take-up. After the intervention period, we invite all participants to complete a follow-up survey similar to the baseline survey to measure key outcomes, including heat pump installations, sales practices, and knowledge.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Metropolitan area and contractor
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
36 core-based statistical areas (metropolitan or micropolitan areas)
Sample size: planned number of observations
About 200 contractor companies
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1/3 pure control, 1/3 treatment, and 1/3 spillover
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
About 2.5 installations
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

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