Energy subsidies have long been used as a key instrument to ease household cost burdens. However, deviations from prescribed consumption patterns and above-threshold use in the residential sector lead to resource waste and exacerbate energy imbalance. Focusing on integrated urban–rural households in Semnan Province, this study first collected household and dwelling characteristics through a multi-stage cluster sampling field survey, and then matched these survey records to administrative utility data to obtain observed (actual) electricity and natural gas consumption for the Iranian year 1403. Consumption was subsequently assessed against national per-capita energy thresholds. In addition to constructing an excess-from-threshold index, bootstrap resampling was used to quantify uncertainty and to derive the empirical distribution of the success rate under three policy scenarios. Results indicate that, in the baseline situation, about 55% of households fall within the threshold.

This share increases to about 66% under a hypothetical 20% consumption reduction, and to about 76% under a combined scenario of a 30% threshold increase alongside a 20% consumption reduction. Moreover, the final logistic model suggests that heterogeneity in success is primarily associated with building and climatic factors as well as household size. The policy implication is that sustained improvement in threshold compliance cannot be achieved through technical recommendations alone; it requires the joint design of financial and social incentives, scalable behavioral instruments, and a regulatory framework built around a single uniform threshold, so that households are autonomously motivated to adjust consumption behavior and invest in energy efficiency, with minimal supportive provisions for vulnerable groups.