Energy conservation: The power of information

Subjects

• Energy and behaviour
• Energy conservation
• Energy economics

Energy Econ. 54, 173–181 (2016)

Monthly energy bills tend to only give customers information on their overall usage without detailing the costs of specific appliances at different times of day. Conversely, in-home displays provide real-time information, which can allow consumers to optimize their usage. Such displays have been shown to lead to a reduction in household energy consumption, but what underpins this behavioural change remains unclear. Now, Nori Tarui at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and collaborators attempt to disentangle whether the change is driven by learning effects or by the presence of constant reminders (that is, by saliency effects).

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