Consumer sentiment survey 2024
In our third sentiment survey, we found that the cost-of-living pinch is still hitting small electricity consumers hard, and confidence in the electricity sector with regards to affordability and resilience remains low.
Background
We conducted our third sentiment survey in May 2024 to better understand what households and small businesses in Aotearoa think of New Zealand’s electricity sector – particularly given the current cost-of-living issues many people are facing. As with our previous sentiment surveys, we commissioned Verian (previously named Kantar Public) to run this survey on our behalf. They collected views from 500 small businesses and 1,000 residents across the motu.
Survey findings
In this year’s survey, we can see that affordability and resilience continue to be the top concerns for small electricity consumers. The report also shows evidence that even more New Zealand households and small businesses are feeling the cost-of-living pinch.
When we consider the affordability of power, we can see that cost concerns have increased over the past two years:
of residential consumers were concerned about electricity costs in 2022
of residential consumers were concerned about electricity costs in 2023
of residential consumers are concerned about electricity costs in 2024.
of small businesses found power bills put a lot of pressure on their finances in 2022
of small businesses found power bills put a lot of pressure on their finances in 2023
of small businesses find power bills are putting a lot of pressure on their finances in 2024.
Close to half of households and more than a third of small businesses are finding it harder to pay electricity bills than they were a year ago:
of households found it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2022
of households found it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2023
45% of households are finding it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2024 – this rises to 52% for renters.
of small businesses found it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2022
of small businesses found it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2023
of small businesses are finding it hard to pay their electricity bills in 2024.
Other findings
- Confidence that the electricity market will deliver better value for money in the next 5 years remains low. Only 20% of household consumers and 21% of small businesses think that better value for money is on the cards.
- Relying on switching to drive competition and better prices isn’t a fix-all: 37% of residential consumers and 34% of small business looked at other electricity providers but decided not to switch. The main reason was that the savings were not good enough to bother changing.
- Bundled deals spark concerns: 1 in 4 residential consumers who have bundled services with their electricity provider – such as power and broadband – found it hard to know if they were actually getting a good deal. 10% of customers on bundled deals later worked out the services were more expensive when bundled.
- 80% of households and 86% of small businesses said they were concerned about the electricity system's resilience to extreme weather events in this year's survey, showing little change from previous years.
See the full results of our 2023 sentiment survey
See the full results of our 2022 sentiment survey
Downloads
See the key findings from the 2024 sentiment survey in our handy one-page overview.
New Zealand small electricity consumer sentiment survey 2024: Overview
Download PDF, 812 KB