Pro-Environmental Incentives and Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment on Electricity Saving Behavior
Energy Policy, 137, 2020
30 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2018 Last revised: 27 Feb 2020
Date Written: November 27, 2019
Abstract
This paper reports evidence from a field experiment investigating households' electricity saving behavior. We motivated households' efforts to save electricity via pro-environmental incentives that did not affect people's monetary utility but targeted their environmental preferences. The results show that such pro-environmental incentives can be effective, especially when framed as potential losses to the environment. Our loss-framed pro-environmental incentive led households to save 5% on their monthly electricity consumption compared to a control group.
Keywords: Pro-environmental behavior, Ecological incentives, Loss aversion, Loss framing, Randomized field experiments, Energy conservation
JEL Classification: D12, D91, Q48
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation