Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers' Inaction in Choosing a Water Tariff
Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers' Inaction in Choosing a Water Tariff
复制标题
疏忽大意：消费者选择水费不作为的分析
DOI：
10.1093/jeea/jvac073
复制
发表时间：
2023
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
Heiss F
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Heiss F
本文研究了消费者在两种不同水费之间的选择。我们在一个新颖的环境中记录了大量的不作为，在这个环境中，客户面临着一个二元决策，并收到简单、详细和个性化的信息，说明如果他们改变水费，他们将获得多少财政节省。我们的经验框架将惯性分为两种来源：注意力不集中和转换成本。该模型估计，将从关税变化中受益的客户中，有一半没有意识到他们获得的机会。根据我们的估计，如果玩家能够集中注意力，转换成本中值将在100英镑左右。假设所有顾客都在关注的模式反而带来了难以置信的高转换成本，中值为400英镑。这表明了注意力不集中对解释消费者不作为的重要性。从家庭的特征来看，我们的结果证实了之前的发现，即家庭受教育程度较高或少数民族比例较低的地区对潜在储蓄的反应程度较高。我们的分析提供的新见解是，这完全是由注意力驱动的，而转换成本实际上随着教育和种族同质化而增加。我们的研究结果表明，旨在增加关注的政策可以在促进供应商之间的竞争和减少不平等方面发挥核心作用。
This paper studies consumers’ choice between two different water tariffs. We document a large inaction in a novel setting where customers face a binary decision and receive simple, detailed, and personalized information about the financial savings they would obtain if they were to switch water tariff. Our empirical framework separates two sources of inertia: inattention and switching costs. The model estimates that half of the customers that would benefit from changing tariff are not aware of the opportunity they are offered. Conditional on paying attention, we estimate median switching costs to be around£100. A model where all customers are assumed to pay attention delivers instead implausibly high switching costs, with a median of£400. This shows the importance of inattention in explaining consumers’ inaction. Looking at the characteristics of the households, our results confirm previous findings that areas where households have higher levels of education or the proportion of minorities is lower display a higher responsiveness to potential savings. The new insight offered by our analysis is that this is entirely driven by attention, whereas switching costs actually increase with education and ethnic homogeneity. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing attention can play a central role in fostering competition among suppliers and reducing inequalities.