IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jeurec/v21y2023i4p1686-1719..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers’ Inaction in Choosing a Water Tariff

Author

Listed:
  • Florian Heiss
  • Carmine Ornaghi
  • Mirco Tonin

Abstract

This paper studies consumers’ choice between two different water tariffs. We document a large inaction in a novel setting where customers face a binary decision and receive simple, detailed, and personalized information about the financial savings they would obtain if they were to switch water tariff. Our empirical framework separates two sources of inertia: inattention and switching costs. The model estimates that half of the customers that would benefit from changing tariff are not aware of the opportunity they are offered. Conditional on paying attention, we estimate median switching costs to be around £100. A model where all customers are assumed to pay attention delivers instead implausibly high switching costs, with a median of £400. This shows the importance of inattention in explaining consumers’ inaction. Looking at the characteristics of the households, our results confirm previous findings that areas where households have higher levels of education or the proportion of minorities is lower display a higher responsiveness to potential savings. The new insight offered by our analysis is that this is entirely driven by attention, whereas switching costs actually increase with education and ethnic homogeneity. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing attention can play a central role in fostering competition among suppliers and reducing inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Heiss & Carmine Ornaghi & Mirco Tonin, 2023. "Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers’ Inaction in Choosing a Water Tariff," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1686-1719.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:21:y:2023:i:4:p:1686-1719.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvac073
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Ravi Bapna & Akhmed Umyarov, 2015. "Do Your Online Friends Make You Pay? A Randomized Field Experiment on Peer Influence in Online Social Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1902-1920, August.
    2. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1975. "The nonlinear limited-information maximum- likelihood estimator and the modified nonlinear two-stage least-squares estimator," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 375-386, November.
    3. Waterson, Michael, 2003. "Consumers and Competition," Economic Research Papers 269563, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    4. Anya Samek & Justin R. Sydnor, 2020. "Impact of Consequence Information on Insurance Choice," NBER Working Papers 28003, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Itai Ater & Vardit Landsman, 2013. "Do Customers Learn from Experience? Evidence from Retail Banking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(9), pages 2019-2035, September.
    6. Jason Abaluck & Abi Adams-Prassl, 2021. "What do Consumers Consider Before They Choose? Identification from Asymmetric Demand Responses," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1611-1663.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christina Gravert, 2024. "From Intent to Inertia: Experimental Evidence from the Retail Electricity Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 11139, CESifo.

    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. Heiss, Florian & Ornaghi, Carmine & Tonin, Mirco, 2021. "Inattention vs switching costs: An analysis of consumers' inaction in choosing a water tariff," DICE Discussion Papers 366, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    2. Carmine Ornaghi & Mirco Tonin, 2018. "Water Tariffs and Consumers' Inaction," CESifo Working Paper Series 6990, CESifo.
    3. Hermanns, Benedicta & Kairies-Schwarz, Nadja & Kokot, Johanna & Vomhof, Markus, 2023. "Heterogeneity in health insurance choice: An experimental investigation of consumer choice and feature preferences," hche Research Papers 29, University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche).
    4. Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Davide Malacrino & Luigi Pistaferri, 2020. "Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(1), pages 115-170, January.
    5. Miguel Godinho de Matos & Pedro Ferreira, 2020. "The Effect of Binge-Watching on the Subscription of Video on Demand: Results from Randomized Experiments," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 1337-1360, December.
    6. Gangopadhyay, Partha & Jain, Siddharth & Bakry, Walid, 2022. "In search of a rational foundation for the massive IT boom in the Australian banking industry: Can the IT boom really drive relationship banking?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Wang, Le & Luo, Xin (Robert) & Li, Han, 2022. "Envy or conformity? An empirical investigation of peer influence on the purchase of non-functional items in mobile free-to-play games," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 308-324.
    8. Greg Lewis & Bora Ozaltun & Georgios Zervas, 2021. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Differentiated Products Demand Systems," Papers 2111.12397, arXiv.org.
    9. Saul Lach & José L. Moraga†González, 2017. "Asymmetric Price Effects of Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(4), pages 767-803, December.
    10. Christina Gravert, 2024. "From Intent to Inertia: Experimental Evidence from the Retail Electricity Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 11139, CESifo.
    11. Sule, Alan & Cemalcilar, Mehmet & Karlan, Dean S. & Zinman, Jonathan, 2015. "Unshrouding Effects on Demand for a Costly Add-on: Evidence from Bank Overdrafts in Turkey," Center Discussion Papers 198558, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    12. Kashaev, Nail & Aguiar, Victor H., 2022. "A random attention and utility model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    13. Wilson, Chris M, 2009. "Market Frictions: A Unified Model of Search and Switching Costs," MPRA Paper 13672, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Genakos, Christos & Roumanias, Costas & Valletti, Tommaso, 2023. "Is having an expert “friend” enough? An analysis of consumer switching behavior in mobile telephony," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 359-372.
    15. Adams, Paul & Hunt, Stefan & Palmer, Christopher & Zaliauskas, Redis, 2021. "Testing the effectiveness of consumer financial disclosure: Experimental evidence from savings accounts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 122-147.
    16. Gandal, Neil & Bar-Gill, Sagit, 2017. "Online Exploration, Content Choice & Echo Chambers: An Experiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 11909, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Salies, Evens, 2005. "A Measure of Switching Costs in the GB Electricity Retail Market," MPRA Paper 28255, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Apr 2007.
    18. Brennan, Timothy J., 2007. "Consumer preference not to choose: Methodological and policy implications," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1616-1627, March.
    19. Kevin J. Boudreau, 2021. "Promoting Platform Takeoff and Self-Fulfilling Expectations: Field Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5953-5967, September.
    20. Papadopoulos, Alexandros & McGowan, Féidhlim & McGinnity, Frances & Timmons, Shane & Lunn, Pete, 2023. "Switching activity in retail financial markets in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS161.

    More about this item

    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:oup:jeurec:v:21:y:2023:i:4:p:1686-1719.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jeea .

    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.