Social Norms and Energy Conservation Beyond the US

Mark Andor, Andreas Gerster, Jörg Peters and Christoph Schmidt

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2020, vol. 103, issue C

Abstract: The seminal studies by Allcott and Mullainathan (2010), Allcott (2011), and Allcott and Rogers (2014) show that social comparison-based home energy reports (HER) are a cost-effective climate policy intervention in the US. Our paper demonstrates the context-dependency of this result. In most industrialized countries, average electricity consumption and carbon intensity are well below US levels. Consequently, HER interventions can only become cost-effective if treatment effect sizes are substantially higher. For Germany, we provide evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial that effect sizes are in fact considerably lower than in the US. We conclude by illustrating that targeting highly responsive subgroups is crucial to reach cost-effectiveness and by identifying the few countries in which HER are promising policy instruments.

Keywords: Social norms; Energy demand; External validity; Randomized field experiments; Non-price interventions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D83 L94 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Social Norms and Energy Conservation Beyond the US (2018)
Working Paper: Social norms and energy conservation beyond the US (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:103:y:2020:i:c:s0095069620300747

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102351

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