<p>Norm-based messaging interventions can help promote residents’ energy-saving behaviors. Intervention effectiveness is partially dependent on how personally relevant reference groups are to residents and how strongly they identify with the groups. The integration of homes with smart grid infrastructure allows for the creation of more personalized normative comparison groups based on residents’ lifestyle (e.g., night or morning-centric users). However, it is still unknown how strongly residents identify with lifestyle groups. Additionally, little research has examined which socio-cognitive mechanisms drive residents’ identification with normative comparison groups. Therefore, this research investigated residents’ perception of lifestyle groups compared to standard reference groups (i.e., neighbors) in norm-based energy feedback programs. Two survey-based experiments were conducted with 2,631 American participants. In terms of total effects, participants did not identify more with lifestyle groups than neighbor groups in either study. However, providing participants information about lifestyle-group peers (compared to neighbors) led to positive indirect effects on group identification through perceived similarity and through serial mediation of perceived similarity and perceived entitativity in both studies. The indirect effect just through perceived entitativity, however, was negative. However, Study 2 revealed that the negative indirect effect through just group entitativity was not significant when participants were told they could interact with other group members and given information about how similar group members save energy. Thus, under certain conditions, lifestyle groups may be a promising alternative reference group for norm-based energy feedback interventions.</p>