Information campaigns for residential energy conservation

Mark Andor, Andreas Gerster and Jörg Peters

No 871, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: This paper evaluates an intervention that randomized information letters about energy efficient investments and behaviors among 120,000 customers of two utilities in Germany. We find that conservation effects differ considerably between both utilities, ranging from a precisely estimated zero effect to 1.4%. By contrast, we do not detect significant framing effects from presenting savings in monetary or ecological terms. Based on random causal forest methods, we show that the effect heterogeneity across utilities cannot be explained by socio-demographic characteristics. Our results demonstrate the importance of site-specific factors for the effectiveness of information campaigns, which has crucial implications for targeting and the ability to infer population-wide effect sizes from pilot studies.

Keywords: Imperfect information; information letters; behavioral public economics; energy efficiency; energy conservation; non-price interventions; targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D83 L94 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Information campaigns for residential energy conservation (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:871

DOI: 10.4419/96973008

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