|
Field
Abstract
|
Before
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. Leveraging Pennsylvania’s rollout of the federally funded Training of Residential Contractors (TREC) program, we will conduct a randomized encouragement design. We will provide additional information, reminders, and incentives to encourage contractors in the treatment group to participate in this program. We will do this through an incentivized survey offered to contractors eligible to participate in the TREC program. We evaluate the impacts of this encouragement on contractor knowledge, sales practices, and heat-pump installation activity. This is a pilot experiment, so we also assess survey response and training take-up rates.
|
After
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.
|
|
Field
Trial Start Date
|
Before
June 15, 2026
|
After
July 06, 2026
|
|
Field
Last Published
|
Before
June 15, 2026 01:45 PM
|
After
June 22, 2026 10:16 PM
|
|
Field
Primary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
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 installation practices
|
After
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
|
|
Field
Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
|
Before
As one installation practice outcome, we will create an outcome variable of whether they mention manual J in an open response question
|
After
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.
|
|
Field
Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
Heat pump training attendance, baseline and follow-up survey response rates
|
After
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
|