Appliance-specific feedback and social comparisons: Evidence from a field experiment on energy conservation

Brülisauer, Marcel; Göette, Lorenz; Jiang, Zhengyi; Schmitz, Jan; Schubert, Renate

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111742

Cited by 21 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Our study addresses this problem by randomly assigning consumers to either moral suasion or economic incentives in a field experiment. 3 Finally, our results provide important implications for economic policy. Moral suasion has become increasingly common when policymakers aim to promote pro-social behavior.…”

mentioning

confidence: 75%

“…Finally, we conducted the third survey for a random sample of 717 households in the area to investigate the external validity of our experimental sample. Columns 1,2,and 3 of Table 1 present the summary statistics of demographic variables and preexperiment consumption data by treatment group. A comparison across control and treatment groups indicates statistical balance in observables because of random assignment of the groups.…”

Section: Economic Incentive Group (E)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…andMcRae and Meeks (2016) find that information provision changes electricity consumers' responses to marginal prices. However, Chetty and Saez (2013) find that providing information about nonlinear tax incentives does not systematically affect earnings on average, although these authors also find evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects among taxpayers 3. Other examples of nonexperimental studies documenting intrinsically motivated conservation includeCutter and Neidell (2009), who study the "Spare the Air" program in California andFerraro and Price (2013), who investigate water conservation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

2018

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Firms and governments often use moral suasion and economic incentives to influence intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for economic activities. To investigate persistence of such interventions, we randomly assign households to moral suasion and dynamic pricing that stimulate energy conservation during peak-demand hours. We find significant habituation and dishabituation for moral suasion-the treatment effect diminishes after repeated interventions but can be restored to the original level by a sufficient time interval between interventions. Economic incentives induce larger treatment effects, little habituation, and significant habit formation. Our results suggest moral suasion and economic incentives produce substantially different short-run and long-run policy impacts.

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confidence: 75%

Section: Economic Incentive Group (E)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

2018

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“…The first treatment is moral suasion, by which policymakers attempt to influence intrinsic motivation to generate pro-social behavior. 1 The second treatment is an economic incentive, by which policymakers aim to affect extrinsic motivation based on standard demand theory. We randomly assign households to one of three groups: a moral suasion group, an economic incentive group, and a control group.…”

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confidence: 99%

Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

Ito

Ida

Tanaka

2018

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

135

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Firms and governments often use moral suasion and economic incentives to influence intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for economic activities. To investigate persistence of such interventions, we randomly assign households to moral suasion and dynamic pricing that stimulate energy conservation during peak-demand hours. We find significant habituation and dishabituation for moral suasion—the treatment effect diminishes after repeated interventions but can be restored to the original level by a sufficient time interval between interventions. Economic incentives induce larger treatment effects, little habituation, and significant habit formation. Our results suggest moral suasion and economic incentives produce substantially different short-run and long-run policy impacts. (JEL C93, D83, L94, L98, Q41, Q48)

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“…According the 2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey of the US Energy Information Administration, 4 the bulk of home electricity use is for air conditioning, refrigerators, and space and water heating, with only about 10% due to lighting. Making deep cuts in household electricity use thus involves either high-effort behavior change such as turning down the heat in winter, or 2 The rapidly growing literature, starting from Schultz et al (2007), now includes a large number of studies evaluating specific designs (Allcott, 2011;Ayres et al, 2012;Costa and Kahn, 2013;Ferraro and Price, 2013;Dolan and Metcalfe, 2015; Jaime Torres and Carlsson, 2018;Holladay et al, 2019;Brülisauer et al, 2020), as well as long-run effects (Ferraro et al, 2011;Allcott and Rogers, 2014;Bernedo et al, 2014), welfare implications (Allcott and Kessler, 2019), and psychological mechanisms (Alberts et al, 2016;Byrne et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm-Based Feedback on Household Waste: Large-Scale Field Experiments in Two Swedish Municipalities

Ek¹

2021

SSRN Journal

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We conduct separate randomized controlled trials of norm-based feedback nudges on household waste in two municipalities in western Sweden. Our main treatment presents recipients with accurate, household-specific feedback highly similar to the standard Home Energy Report design, but with residual (unsorted) waste as the object of comparison. We also test a novel 'dynamic' norm design informed by psychological research. Post-experimental reductions are on the order of 7-12% in both municipalities, substantially larger than in most previous studies. We estimate that the reduction corresponds to a 30-60% increase in unit-based waste fees. Effect differences between our main treatment and the dynamicnorm treatment are not significant. We find that feedback nudges are highly cost-effective compared to alternative means for reducing household residual waste. However, net social benefits depend on whether existing waste fees internalize the marginal social cost of residual waste. Our results have implications for the usefulness of feedback interventions as well as for unit-based pricing of waste, on which our feedback materials rely.

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Appliance-specific feedback and social comparisons: Evidence from a field experiment on energy conservation

Cited by 21 publications

References 33 publications

Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

Moral Suasion and Economic Incentives: Field Experimental Evidence from Energy Demand

Norm-Based Feedback on Household Waste: Large-Scale Field Experiments in Two Swedish Municipalities

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