Honor, Goal Setting, and Energy Conservation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Student Dormitories

Non-monetary incentives are increasingly being studied in encouraging energy conservation. In light of this, we conducted a natural field experiment in student dormitories to assess the effect of honor-based incentives and goal setting on electricity saving and the intrinsic motivation to save energy. Using a difference-in-difference model, we found that goal setting reduced the dormitories' electricity consumption by 15.93\% on average compared to the control group. However, the honor-based incentives were not effective on average. In addition, the study found that both honor-based incentives and goal setting, on average, did not crowd out or crowd in the intrinsic motivation to save electricity in dormitories. The heterogeneity analysis showed that the more the dormitory values honor incentives, the more its intrinsic motivation was crowded in by honor incentives. We also found dormitory characteristics affect the crowding effect on the intrinsic motivation.