Information Provision and Consumer Behavior: A Natural Experiment in Billing Frequency

Casey Wichman

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: In this study, I estimate a causal effect of increased billing frequency on consumer behavior. I exploit a natural experiment in which residential water customers switched exogenously from bimonthly to monthly billing. Customers increase consumption by 3.5-5 percent in response to more frequent information. This result is reconciled in models of price and quantity uncertainty, where increases in billing frequency reduce the distortion in consumer perceptions. Using treatment effects as sufficient statistics, I calculate consumer welfare gains equivalent to 0.5-1 percent of annual water expenditures. Heterogeneous treatment effects suggest increases in outdoor water use.

Keywords: information provision; billing frequency; price perception; natural experiment; water demand; water conservation; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D61 H42 L95 Q21 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12-29
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-15-35-REV.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-15-35-REV.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-15-35-REV.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Information provision and consumer behavior: A natural experiment in billing frequency (2017)
Working Paper: Information Provision and Consumer Behavior: A Natural Experiment in Billing Frequency (2015)
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:rff:dpaper:dp-15-35-rev

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Resources for the Future ().