Do small pecuniary incentives motivate residential peak energy reductions? Experimental evidence

Andrew Royal and Galib Rustamov

Applied Economics, 2018, vol. 50, issue 57, 6193-6202

Abstract: This article evaluates demand-side interventions aimed at reducing residential consumption during the peak energy periods. The interventions were applied to a sample of high-income households and included a set of text message reminders advising participants to reduce electricity use during peak hours. One group of participants received accompanying intra-day increases in peak-hour kWh rates, while another group of participants did not receive any price incentives. We find that intra-day price increases, though small in absolute magnitude, produced significant reductions in peak energy use. Reductions in use, as compared to a control group, were significantly higher among the pricing group compared to the group only receiving text messages, suggesting that pricing played a central role in influencing behaviour. Our results contribute to ongoing policy discussion about the effect of dynamic pricing on consumer energy demand.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2018.1489508 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:57:p:6193-6202

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2018.1489508

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().