Hi
An amplifier would be typically used in back-off regime when signal is modulated using some spectrum efficient techniques that is in turn sensitive to nonlinearities.
An example of such a modulation could be OFDM modulation. In its raw version, it is not well characterized by average power as for some symbols peak power could be up to 6dB higher than the average. For these peaks, the nonlinearities have more severe effects than if only average power is considered, so one should "back off" from using maximum linear power of the amplifier (defined as 1dB compression point) and use 3-6 dB less, depending on the system under consideration.
flyhigh