Double trouble: concurrently targeting water and electricity using normative messages in the Middle East

Ukasha Ramli and Kate Laffan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Personalised normative messages have been shown to be effective at encouraging both electricity and separately water savings. As use of this approach to promote resource savings becomes increasingly widespread, an important question is whether providing such feedback on consumption of the two resources together can yield reductions in both areas. In a field experiment with over 200,000 households in the Middle East, we send households personalised normative messages regarding both their water and electricity consumption on a monthly basis. This intervention saw a statistically significant reduction of around 1.2% for electricity but not for water consumption. Furthermore, we test different ways of concurrently presenting normative messages of both water and energy, including presenting it as a combined eco score. Local treatment effects of these were around 1.2% reduction. Our findings contribute towards nexus thinking around how (not) to concurrently achieve energy and water savings using normative feedback.

Keywords: eco-feedback; energy usage; pro-environmental; social norms; water usage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2022-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-exp and nep-reg
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Published in Energy Research and Social Science, 1, June, 2022, 88. ISSN: 2214-6296

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:113699

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