Urgency and engagement: Empirical evidence from a large-scale intervention on energy use awareness

Giovanna d'Adda, Arianna Galliera and Massimo Tavoni

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2020, vol. 81, issue C

Abstract: We study how to foster engagement in the energy sector, where signals about consumption are opaque and infrequent. We evaluate an energy company's large-scale communication campaign for promoting natural gas self-reading. Self-readings allow utilities to bill customers on the basis of real - as opposed to estimated - consumption. Exploiting variation in campaign messages, we test the impact of imposing a sense of urgency on customers through a deadline for submitting a meter reading. We find that messages that induce a sense of urgency are twice as effective than generic messages in encouraging self-readings, consistent with recent research on the urgency effect. The increased sense of urgency moves to action customers with both high and low levels of baseline engagement; the effect is stronger on the former.

Keywords: Consumer behavior; Information; Urgency; Gas consumption; Engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D83 D91 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:81:y:2020:i:c:s0167487020300325

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2020.102275

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