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In the electricity sector, energy conservation through technological and behavioral change is estimated to have a savings potential of 123 million metric tons of carbon per year, which represents 20% of US household direct emissions in the United States. In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of nonprice information strategies to motivate conservation behavior. We introduce environment and health-based messaging as a behavioral strategy to reduce energy use in the home and promote energy conservation. In a randomized controlled trial with real-time appliancelevel energy metering, we find that environment and health-based information strategies, which communicate the environmental and public health externalities of electricity production, such as pounds of pollutants, childhood asthma, and cancer, outperform monetary savings information to drive behavioral change in the home. Environment and health-based information treatments motivated 8% energy savings versus control and were particularly effective on families with children, who achieved up to 19% energy savings. Our results are based on a panel of 3.4 million hourly appliance-level kilowatt-hour observations for 118 residences over 8 mo. We discuss the relative impacts of both cost-savings information and environmental health messaging strategies with residential consumers.energy conservation | decision making | health information disclosure | environmental behavior | randomized controlled trials I n the electricity sector, energy conservation through technological and behavioral change is estimated to have a savings potential of 123 million metric tons of carbon per year, which represents 20% of US household direct emissions (1). Although some scholars contend that improvements in energy-generation technologies offer the greatest potential for carbon emission reductions (2), others argue that household-level behavioral changes can also produce significant and immediate emission reductions (1). In residential electricity markets, however, promoting conservation through behavior change is particularly challenging. Traditional economic incentives for household energy conservation are typically small and subject to problems of inattention or imperfect information, which economists often classify as information or market failures (3-7). Tailored information strategies could solve problems of imperfect information in markets-by disclosing the unobserved costs of individual consumption decisions to consumers (8). However, because electricity demand is relatively price inelastic (9), nonprice information strategies using normative, intrinsic, or social motivations might prove effective alternatives (10, 11). In this article, we compare the effectiveness of environmental and health information disclosures on residential energy consumption to more traditional cost-based information strategies.Public environmental and health damages from energy generation, which include premature mortality and morbidity (such as cancer, chronic bronchitis, asthma, and other r...

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Little is known about the effect of message framing on conservation behavior over time. In a randomized controlled trial with residential households, we use advanced metering and information technologies to test how different messages about household energy use impact the dynamics of conservation behavior down to the appliance level. Our results, based on 374 million panel observations of kilowatt-hour (kWh) electricity consumption for 118 households over 9 months, show that differences in behavioral responses due to message framing become more significant over time. We find that a health-based frame, in which households consider the human health effects of their marginal electricity use, induced persistent energy savings behavior of 8-10% over 100 days; whereas a more traditional cost savings frame, drove sharp attenuation of treatment effects after 2 weeks with no significant savings versus control after 7 weeks. We discuss implications for the design of effective information campaigns to engage households in conservation behavior.

Information programs are promising strategies to encourage investments in energy efficiency in commercial buildings. However, the realized effectiveness of these programs has not yet been estimated on a large scale. Here we take advantage of a large sample of monthly electricity consumption data for 178,777 commercial buildings in Los Angeles to analyze energy savings and emissions reductions from three major programs designed to encourage efficiency: the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program and the U.S Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy andEnvironmental Design (LEED) program. Using matching techniques, we find energy savings that range from 18% to 30%, depending on the program. These savings represent a reduction of 210 million kilowatt-hours or 145 kilotons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year. However, we also find that these programs do not substantially reduce emissions in small and medium-sized buildings, which represent about two-thirds of commercial sector building emissions.