IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v71y2018icp403-410.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Information provision and energy consumption: Evidence from a field experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Aydin, Erdal
  • Brounen, Dirk
  • Kok, Nils

Abstract

Energy consumption and the residential real estate market are closely related, leading to a multitude of policy interventions targeted to reduce the carbon externality from the housing market. Feedback provision regarding household energy consumption is considered a low-cost strategy for promoting energy conservation. Although various studies investigate the impact of information feedback on energy consumption, less is known about the heterogeneity of these responses. In this paper, we report the findings from a field experiment where participants are exposed to consumption feedback through the use of in-home displays during two discrete stages. The results show that information provision reduces electricity consumption by around 20%, on average, relative to a sample of non-treated households. Importantly, we also show that this average effect significantly differs based on the time of day and across the treatment group. Most of the feedback effect occurs during off-peak hours, and clusters among households that are older and that are most focused on energy conservation.

Suggested Citation

  • Aydin, Erdal & Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils, 2018. "Information provision and energy consumption: Evidence from a field experiment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 403-410.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:71:y:2018:i:c:p:403-410
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2018.03.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988318300896
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2018.03.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Isamu Matsukawa, 2004. "The Effects of Information on Residential Demand for Electricity," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-18.
    2. Schultz, P. Wesley & Estrada, Mica & Schmitt, Joseph & Sokoloski, Rebecca & Silva-Send, Nilmini, 2015. "Using in-home displays to provide smart meter feedback about household electricity consumption: A randomized control trial comparing kilowatts, cost, and social norms," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P1), pages 351-358.
    3. Gans, Will & Alberini, Anna & Longo, Alberto, 2013. "Smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption: Evidence from a natural experiment in Northern Ireland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 729-743.
    4. Erdal Aydin & Nils Kok & Dirk Brounen, 2017. "Energy efficiency and household behavior: the rebound effect in the residential sector," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(3), pages 749-782, August.
    5. Katrina Jessoe & David Rapson, 2014. "Knowledge Is (Less) Power: Experimental Evidence from Residential Energy Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1417-1438, April.
    6. Paul L. Joskow, 2012. "Creating a Smarter U.S. Electricity Grid," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 29-48, Winter.
    7. Lynham, John & Nitta, Kohei & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Tarui, Nori, 2016. "Why does real-time information reduce energy consumption?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 173-181.
    8. Sebastien Houde, Annika Todd, Anant Sudarshan, June A. Flora , and K. Carrie Armel, 2013. "Real-time Feedback and Electricity Consumption: A Field Experiment Assessing the Potential for Savings and Persistence," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    9. Faruqui, Ahmad & Sergici, Sanem & Sharif, Ahmed, 2010. "The impact of informational feedback on energy consumption—A survey of the experimental evidence," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1598-1608.
    10. Kopsakangas Savolainen, Maria & Svento, Rauli, 2012. "Real-Time Pricing in the Nordic Power markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 1131-1142.
    11. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1082-1095, October.
    12. Alfred E. Kahn, 1988. "The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262610523, April.
    13. Paul L. Joskow & Catherine D. Wolfram, 2012. "Dynamic Pricing of Electricity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 381-385, May.
    14. Carroll, James & Lyons, Seán & Denny, Eleanor, 2014. "Reducing household electricity demand through smart metering: The role of improved information about energy saving," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 234-243.
    15. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Rethinking real-time electricity pricing," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 820-842.
    16. Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils & Quigley, John M., 2013. "Energy literacy, awareness, and conservation behavior of residential households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 42-50.
    17. Hunt Allcott & Todd Rogers, 2014. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3003-3037, October.
    18. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1082-1095.
    19. Jaffe, Adam B. & Stavins, Robert N., 1994. "The energy-efficiency gap What does it mean?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 804-810, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ramos, A. & Gago, A. & Labandeira, X. & Linares, P., 2015. "The role of information for energy efficiency in the residential sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 17-29.
    2. Iztok Podbregar & Sanja Filipović & Mirjana Radovanović & Olga Mirković Isaeva & Polona Šprajc, 2021. "Electricity Prices and Consumer Behavior, Case Study Serbia—Randomized Control Trials Method," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-12, January.
    3. Ruokamo, Enni & Meriläinen, Teemu & Karhinen, Santtu & Räihä, Jouni & Suur-Uski, Päivi & Timonen, Leila & Svento, Rauli, 2022. "The effect of information nudges on energy saving: Observations from a randomized field experiment in Finland," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    4. Buckley, Penelope, 2020. "Prices, information and nudges for residential electricity conservation: A meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    5. Khosrowpour, Ardalan & Jain, Rishee K. & Taylor, John E. & Peschiera, Gabriel & Chen, Jiayu & Gulbinas, Rimas, 2018. "A review of occupant energy feedback research: Opportunities for methodological fusion at the intersection of experimentation, analytics, surveys and simulation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 304-316.
    6. Giraudet, Louis-Gaëtan, 2020. "Energy efficiency as a credence good: A review of informational barriers to energy savings in the building sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    7. Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet, 2018. "Energy efficiency as a credence good: A review of informational barriers to building energy savings," Working Papers 2018.07, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    8. Iwafune, Yumiko & Mori, Yuko & Kawai, Toshiaki & Yagita, Yoshie, 2017. "Energy-saving effect of automatic home energy report utilizing home energy management system data in Japan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 382-392.
    9. Cardella, Eric & Ewing, Brad & Williams, Ryan Blake, 2018. "Green is Good – The Impact of Information Nudges on the Adoption of Voluntary Green Power Plans," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266583, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    10. Shirley Pon, 2017. "The Effect of Information on TOU Electricity Use: an Irish residential study," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 6).
    11. Weber, Sylvain & Puddu, Stefano & Pacheco, Diana, 2017. "Move it! How an electric contest motivates households to shift their load profile," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 255-270.
    12. Chen, Victor L. & Delmas, Magali A. & Locke, Stephen L. & Singh, Amarjeet, 2017. "Information strategies for energy conservation: A field experiment in India," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 215-227.
    13. Asmare, Fissha & Jaraitė, Jūratė & Kažukauskas, Andrius, 2021. "The effect of descriptive information provision on electricity consumption: Experimental evidence from Lithuania," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    14. Batalla-Bejerano, Joan & Trujillo-Baute, Elisa & Villa-Arrieta, Manuel, 2020. "Smart meters and consumer behaviour: Insights from the empirical literature," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    15. Matteo Fontana & Massimo Tavoni & Simone Vantini, 2019. "Functional Data Analysis of high-frequency load curves reveals drivers of residential electricity consumption," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-16, June.
    16. Paschmann, Martin & Paulus, Simon, 2017. "The Impact of Advanced Metering Infrastructure on Residential Electricity Consumption - Evidence from California," EWI Working Papers 2017-8, Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI).
    17. d'Adda, Giovanna & Galliera, Arianna & Tavoni, Massimo, 2020. "Urgency and engagement: Empirical evidence from a large-scale intervention on energy use awareness," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    18. Schleich, Joachim & Alsheimer, Sven, 2024. "The relationship between willingness to pay and carbon footprint knowledge: Are individuals willing to pay more to offset their carbon footprint if they learn about its size and distance to the 1.5 °C," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    19. Stefano Ceolotto & Eleanor Denny, 2021. "Putting a new 'spin' on energy labels: measuring the impact of reframing energy efficiency on tumble dryer choices in a multi-country experiment," Trinity Economics Papers tep1521, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    20. Takanori Ida, Kayo Murakami, and Makoto Tanaka, 2016. "Electricity demand response in Japan: Experimental evidence from a residential photovoltaic power-generation system," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Energy conservation; Feedback; Information provision; Field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q30 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - General
    • Q40 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - General
    • R22 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Other Demand

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:71:y:2018:i:c:p:403-410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.