To be aware of the potential for energy savings in their homes, individuals need specific energy-related and financial knowledge. In addition, they also need the cognitive skills to apply this knowledge, for example when it comes to the calculation of the lifetime cost of household appliances or...

The literature on the energy-efficiency gap discusses the status-quo bias as a behavioral anomaly that potentially increases the energy consumption of a household through at least three channels: (1) by making consumers keep their energy-using durables as long as possible, until wearout forces...

It is an ongoing debate how to increase the adoption of energy-efficient light bulbs and household appliances in the presence of the so-called ’energy efficiency gap’. One measure to support consumers’ decision-making towards the purchase of more efficient appliances is the display of...

This paper estimates the level of transient and persistent efficiency in the use of electricity in Swiss households using the generalized true random effects model (GTREM). A panel dataset of 1, 994 Swiss households from 2010 to 2014 collected via a household survey is used to estimate an...

There is evidence that many individuals make sub-optimal investment decisions when the benefits and costs associated with that decision are distributed over time. One example is the decision to adopt new electrical appliances, with the benefits of choosing a more energy efficient device...

On the one hand, empirical evidence shows that in financial markets women seem to behave more risk averse than men. On the other hand there is experimental showing that in risky decisions controlled for opportunity sets only the context matters. In investment and insurance contexts with given...

This paper reports the results of an experiment that brings together psychological measures of competence and overconfidence with laboratory economic measures of individual valuations of uncertainty. We examine the valuations of risky and ambiguous lotteries in a financial decision context. The...

Women are commonly stereotyped as more risk averse than men in financial decision making. In this paper we examine whether this stereotype reflects actual differences in risk taking behavior by means of a laboratory experiment with monetary incentives. Gender differences in risk taking may be...

When valuing risky prospects, people typically overweight small probabilities and underweight medium and large probabilities, but there is vast heterogeneity in individual behavior. We explore the relationship between person-specific probability weights, estimated from investment decisions in a...