The Alignment Effect of Auditing

Johannes Gessner (), Andreas Gerster and Michael Kramm

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: There is growing evidence that households often forgo profitable energy efficiency retrofits, partly due to inattention and imperfect information about their economic benefits. We conduct an incentivized survey experiment to evaluate both the effecƟveness and the welfare implicaƟons of a widely used policy tool aimed at addressing this issue: providing information from an energy efficiency audit. In our incentivized experiment, participants in the treatment group receive personalized information about the potential cost savings from retrofitting their heating systems, while those in the control group do not receive such information. Our results show that providing this information does not increase the average willingness to pay for a retrofit.

Keywords: information provision; nudge; welfare; heterogeneity; incentivized survey experiment; energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 Q41 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-ene and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_696

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