Electricity Conservation Campaigns and High Consumption Appliances - A Field Experiment on Feedback, Goal Setting and Incentives

Feedback interventions are considered a promising instrument to promoteenergy conservation among households and thus, to mitigate climate change. Need. However,it remains unclear whether their effectiveness can be increased by incentivizing thepursuit of energy-savings goals. In this paper, we report the resultsof a randomized control trial with 442 households over eight months in Singapore. Werandomly combine energy consumption feedback reports with specific energy savings goalsand two types of incentives: i. monetary incentives for the household and ii. environmentalincentives in the form of donations to an environmental organization. Results.The combination of feedback and goal setting significantly reduced household electricityconsumption by approximately 16 percent compared with the control group. Treatmenteffects persisted in the post-intervention period. Additional monetary, or environmentalincentives did not further reduce the electricity consumption in our sample. Importantly,our results point to a partial shift in consumption from high- to low-electricity consumptionappliances. Our findings suggest that (low cost) behavioral interventions shouldbe specially targeted at high-electricity consuming appliances and that the availabilityof more energy-efficient alternative technologies may help to make behavioral electricitysavings campaigns successful. Behavioral interventions and efficient technologiesmay thus be important complements in combating climate change