Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

John List, Robert Metcalfe (), Michael Price and Florian Rundhammer ()

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: The literature has shown the power of social norms to promote residential energy conservation, particularly among high usage users. This study uses a natural field experiment with nearly 200,000 US households to explore whether a financial rewards program can complement such approaches. We observe strong impacts of financial rewards, particularly amongst low-usage and low-variance households, customers who typically are less responsive to normative messaging. Our data thus suggest important policy complementarities between behavioral and financial incentives: whereas non-pecuniary interventions disproportionally affect intense users, financial incentives are able to affect substantially low-user, "sticky households."

Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-exp and nep-reg
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment (2017)
Working Paper: Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment (2017)
Working Paper: Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:natura:00597

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