Does social pressure motivate private contributions to a public good? Evidence from a field experiment in the residential electricity market

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This dissertation research determines whether social pressure encourages voluntary electricity conservation. The project is a field experiment conducted with the cooperation of a large electric utility. The experiment tests whether households are more likely to sign up for an energy efficiency program when their participation is observable by their neighbors. Residents of high rise apartment buildings sign up for the energy efficiency program on sign up sheets posted publicly in their building lobby. The sign up sheets help move the sign up decision from the privacy of residents' living rooms to a public setting, where social pressure may increase the motivation to participate. The design of the sign up sheets varies so that in some cases residents' decisions to participate remain anonymous. In other cases, these decisions are observable. If social pressure motivates participation, then more people will participate when their decision is observable. To help determine the conditions under which social pressure is most effective, residents are invited to participate via varied mailers which emphasize different aspects of the program.The broader impact of this project is its contribution to conservation efforts. The research documents Americans' intrinsic motivation to save energy and it tests replicable methods of encouraging conservation. The real-world setting makes it easy to generalize the results of this experiment to other settings. The research results will assist regulators and green marketers in reducing energy consumption and encouraging consumers to purchase green products.