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In this field experiment, we investigate the spillover effects of real-time social comparison information provided via in-home displays on residential water and energy consumption. We find that social comparisons targeted at electricity use induce conservation beyond electricity, leading to substantial reductions in energy use for water and space heating. Meanwhile, social comparisons targeted at water use induce little or no effects on electricity, water, and space heating consumption. We argue that the differences in the direct and spillover effects of the two treatments can be explained by the differences in preexisting social norms and moral dissonance. The analysis of the heterogeneity of spillover effects reveals that the observed effects are more pronounced among households at the higher percentiles of resource use. Overall, our results suggest that spillover effects on resource use could be as large as the direct effects of behavioral interventions if there are strong, preexisting social norms to conserve the targeted resource.

In this study, a net social cost framework is applied to provide insights on policy issues relating to the cross-border trade in waste fuel. We estimate the net social cost of using imported waste fuel in a highly efficient combined heat and power plant (CHP) in a cold climate by considering both private costs and benefits as well as external costs related to energy production, alternative waste management and fuel transport. We conclude that using imported waste fuel is beneficial from a societal perspective compared to using biofuel, given the wide range of assumptions regarding technical, economic and environmental characteristics. The net social cost is mainly determined by fuel cost advantages and the external cost of greenhouse gas emissions. External costs associated with transports only marginally impact the net social cost of waste imports for incineration. The results are robust to variation in the excess heat utilisation rate, which implies that importing waste for incineration would also be beneficial in countries with warmer climates where district heating networks already exist.

In this paper, we investigate whether a pro-environmental framing influences households' stated willingness to accept restrictions on their electricity use. We use a split-sample choice experiment and ask respondents to choose between their current electricity contract and hypothetical contracts featuring various load controls and a monetary compensation. Our results indicate that the framing makes respondents marginally less likely to prefer their current contracts. We find significant pro-environmental framing effect related to a few contract attributes, particularly the framing reduces respondents' willingness-to-accept compensation for the number of days with load control and for flexibility to choose appliances for load control. The results further show that the framing affects respondents who do not perform pro-environmental activities. Our finding suggests that a pro-environmental message, which is inexpensive to include in a proposed contract, may influence the preferences of people who are less engaged in pro-environmental activities.

Households typically receive utility bills where all electricity use during a fixed period is lumped together. The lack of direct feedback in the form of marginal costs of using specific electric appliances potentially leads to mistakes in households' decision-making because of biased cost perceptions. In this paper, we test the commonly held notion that lack of relevant energy-related knowledge results in cost underestimation of using electric appliances that may lead to over-consumption of energy. Contrary to this notion, our results show that less knowledgeable energy consumers tend to have higher cost perceptions than others. This finding implies that less knowledgeable energy consumers may consume too little of energy. We also find that a substantial share of the sampled households, in particular less knowledgeable energy consumers, are less willing to receive relevant cost-free information about their energy use and costs. This finding suggests that poor energy-related knowledge may not only be a matter of high information search and processing costs, but also a matter of consumers’ limited attention capacity.

The main purpose of this paper is to estimate lost consumer values due to various restrictions on household electricity use involving behavior adaptation. To do this, we conduct a choice experiment where households choose between hypothetical electricity contracts including various restrictions on the use of high-power household appliances. In addition, we use a contingent valuation question related to complete blackouts to study a restriction on other types of electricity usage (heating, lighting, TV, etc.). The results indicate a significant difference between the value lost due to the soft control, and the blackouts. Furthermore, policies aiming at stimulating behavioral changes are costly and it is far from obvious that demand response requiring behavioral adaptation is more cost effective than supply response (i.e., increased production of electricity).

In this paper, we carry out a field experiment that contributes to the literature on how social comparisons affect residential energy and water use in two important ways. First, we study a social comparison treatment that is continuous and communicated via pre‐installed in‐home displays, which are salient and updated in real time. Second, we estimate the effects of provision of social comparisons on two distinguished resources – electricity and water – in the same experimental setting. We find that, on average, our social comparison reduces daily residential energy consumption by 6.7 percent but has no effect on overall residential water use.

Internet panels are increasingly used for stated preference research. Because members of such panels receive compensation for each completed survey, one concern is that over time this creates professional respondents who answer surveys solely for the monetary compensation. We identify professional respondents using data on panel tenure, survey response frequency, completion rate and total number of completed surveys. We find evidence of two types of professional respondents: “hyperactives” who answer surveys frequently and “experienced” who have long panel tenure and a large number of completed surveys. Using an integrated choice and latent variable model on stated preference survey data, we find that “hyperactive” respondents are less likely to choose the 'status quo’ and have a more stochastic choice process as seen from the econometrician's point of view, whereas “experienced” respondents have a relatively more deterministic choice process. Our results show that “hyperactive” respondents significantly impact estimated values.

Incomplete information may be one reason why some households do not invest in energy efficiency even though it would benefit them to do so. Energy performance certificates (EPCs) have been promoted to overcome such information shortages. In this paper, we investigate whether EPCs together with mandatory home energy audits make households more likely to invest in energy efficiency. Our study takes advantage of the mandatory nature of the EPCs to avoid the potential selection bias problem that typically applies to studies using voluntary energy audits as the treatment. Our treatment group consists of single-household houses in Sweden sold from 2008, i.e., when EPCs became legally required in connection with sales of residential buildings, to 2015; while the control group consists of houses sold between 2002 and 2008, i.e., without an EPC. The results show that there is no statistically significant treatment effect for most of the measures that a household can take to improve the energy performance of their house. The significant treatment effect that we do find concerns a few heating system-related measures.

In this paper we investigate if a pro-environmental framing influences households' stated willingness to accept restrictions on their electricity use. We use a split-sample choice experiment (CE) and ask respondents to choose between their current electricity contract and hypothetical contracts featuring various load controls and a monetary compensation. Our results indicate that the pro-environmental framing have little impact on the respondents' choices. We observe a significant framing eeffect on choices and marginal willingness-to-accept (MWTA) for only a few contract attributes. The results further suggest that there is no significant framing effect among households that engage in different pro-environmental activities.