IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pie/dsedps/2023-299.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Curbing Energy Consumption through Voluntary Quotas: Experimental Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Campigotto
  • Marco Catola
  • Simone D’Alessandro
  • Pietro Guarnieri
  • Lorenzo Spadoni

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of voluntary consumption quotas as a strategy to address resource supply shortages. The results of an incentivized online experiment are presented in which a Nash demand game was used to model an energy consumption problem. Participants had the option to join an energy conservation programme by accepting a consumption quota. Those who accepted the quota traded off their maximum demand for energy in exchange for the certainty that their demand would be met, while those who rejected the quota could demand and possibly earn more but risked suffering from a power outage, in which case they received nothing. Three different quota schemes are examined, and their policy implications are discussed. Our findings suggest that voluntary quotas may lead to a significant decrease in overall demand and contribute to enhancing consumption security.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Campigotto & Marco Catola & Simone D’Alessandro & Pietro Guarnieri & Lorenzo Spadoni, 2023. "Curbing Energy Consumption through Voluntary Quotas: Experimental Evidence," Discussion Papers 2023/299, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:pie:dsedps:2023/299
    Note: ISSN 2039-1854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ec.unipi.it/documents/Ricerca/papers/2023-299.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco & Ghidoni, Riccardo, 2018. "Carbon is forever: A climate change experiment on cooperation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 169-184.
    2. Anderies, John M. & Janssen, Marco A. & Lee, Allen & Wasserman, Hannah, 2013. "Environmental variability and collective action: Experimental insights from an irrigation game," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 166-176.
    3. Bernard, Mark & Dreber, Anna & Strimling, Pontus & Eriksson, Kimmo, 2013. "The subgroup problem: When can binding voting on extractions from a common pool resource overcome the tragedy of the commons?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 122-130.
    4. Daniel W. O’Neill & Andrew L. Fanning & William F. Lamb & Julia K. Steinberger, 2018. "A good life for all within planetary boundaries," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 1(2), pages 88-95, February.
    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. Pietro Guarnieri & Lorenzo Spadoni, 2024. "Norms and anti-coordination: elicitation and priming in an El Farol Bar Game experiment," Discussion Papers 2024/303, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.

    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. Astrid Dannenberg & Carlo Gallier, 2020. "The choice of institutions to solve cooperation problems: a survey of experimental research," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(3), pages 716-749, September.
    2. Castro, Damaris & Bleys, Brent, 2023. "Do people think they have enough? A subjective income sufficiency assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    3. zu Ermgassen, Sophus & Drewniok, Michal & Bull, Joseph & Walker, Christine Corlet & Mancini, Mattia & Ryan-Collins, Josh & Serrenho, André Cabrera, 2022. "A home for all within planetary boundaries: pathways for meeting England’s housing needs without transgressing national climate and biodiversity goals," OSF Preprints 5kxce, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ragnheiður Bogadóttir, 2020. "The Social Metabolism of Quiet Sustainability in the Faroe Islands," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Hametner, Markus, 2022. "Economics without ecology: How the SDGs fail to align socioeconomic development with environmental sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    6. Felipe Vásquez & Gibran Vita & Daniel B. Müller, 2018. "Food Security for an Aging and Heavier Population," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Marie-Charlotte Buisson & Arijit Das & Aditi Mukherji, 2017. "Where River Meets the Sea," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 9(1-2), pages 45-65, April.
    8. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco, 2017. "Climate change: Behavioral responses from extreme events and delayed damages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 103-115.
    9. Leroy, David, 2023. "An empirical assessment of the institutional performance of community-based water management in a large-scale irrigation system in southern Mexico," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    10. Vita, Gibran & Lundström, Johan R. & Hertwich, Edgar G. & Quist, Jaco & Ivanova, Diana & Stadler, Konstantin & Wood, Richard, 2019. "The Environmental Impact of Green Consumption and Sufficiency Lifestyles Scenarios in Europe: Connecting Local Sustainability Visions to Global Consequences," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Pevnitskaya, Svetlana & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2022. "The effect of access to clean technology on pollution reduction: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 117-141.
    12. Yu-Hsuan Lin, 2018. "How social preferences influence the stability of a climate coalition," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(2), pages 151-166.
    13. Tallgauer, Maximilian & Schank, Christoph, 2024. "Challenging the growth-prosperity Nexus: Redefining undergraduate economics education for the Anthropocene," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    14. Virág, Doris & Wiedenhofer, Dominik & Baumgart, André & Matej, Sarah & Krausmann, Fridolin & Min, Jihoon & Rao, Narasimha D. & Haberl, Helmut, 2022. "How much infrastructure is required to support decent mobility for all? An exploratory assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    15. Emma Hakala & Ville Lähde & Antti Majava & Tero Toivanen & Tere Vadén & Paavo Järvensivu & Jussi T. Eronen, 2019. "Northern Warning Lights: Ambiguities of Environmental Security in Finland and Sweden," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-15, April.
    16. Aschemann-Witzel, Jessica & Stangherlin, Isadora Do Carmo, 2021. "Upcycled by-product use in agri-food systems from a consumer perspective: A review of what we know, and what is missing," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    17. Roggenkamp, Hauke C., 2024. "Revisiting ‘Growth and Inequality in Public Good Provision’—Reproducing and Generalizing Through Inconvenient Online Experimentation," OSF Preprints 6rn97, Center for Open Science.
    18. Sandra Waddock, 2020. "Reframing and Transforming Economics around Life," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-16, September.
    19. Natália M. P. de Alencar & Martin Le Tissier & Shona K. Paterson & Alice Newton, 2020. "Circles of Coastal Sustainability: A Framework for Coastal Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-27, June.
    20. Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A. & Polanski, Arnold, 2020. "Dirty neighbors — Pollution in an interlinked world," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    energy consumption; online experiment; Nash demand game; power outages; voluntary quotas;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C99 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Other
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pie:dsedps:2023/299. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dspisit.html .

    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.