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• To identify households with under-consumption behavior as energy poverty, hidden energy poverty indicators for the scenario of China are established. • This article finds that gift-giving norms embedded in China aggregates hidden energy poverty. • Although the share of hidden-energy-poor declines with time, two-thirds of the hidden-energy-poor is not income poor. • The non-income-poor is with larger gift-giving expenses that crowd out energy consumption, and consequently trapped in energy poverty. Responding to energy poverty elimination has provided a dominant lens for avoiding new returns to income poverty, particularly in China. Due to the significance of the energy poverty problem, a growing body of literature has extensively explored its definitions, measurements and causes. However, traditional criteria lack a nuanced understanding of the complexity of China's current energy poverty. Meanwhile, there is growing interest in how social norms contribute to energy poverty traps or escapes. This article establishes a composite index by taking advantage of climate zones (considering both heating and cooling requirements), dwelling conditions and energy expenditures, which attempts to heterogeneously identify households with underconsumption of energy behaviour as hidden energy poverty (hEP). Importantly, it further examines gift giving in relation to hEP. Employing panel data from China, this article discovers that 50.75% of households experience hEP. By robustly using a range of hEP metrics, this article reveals that gift giving increased the incidence of hEP. Particularly, compared with the income-poor group, the results suggest that the nonincome poor were associated with a larger economic burden from gift-giving expenses, which crowded out energy expenditures and eventually compressed energy needs. The focus of this article sheds light on a state-of-the-art outlook of capturing the multifaceted nature of energy poverty and promoting policy-makers to facilitate appropriate social norms instead of simplistically targeting the poor in energy poverty eradication efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]