Information acquisition and residential electricity consumption: Evidence from a field experiment

The estimation results of a simultaneous equation model with discrete choice of hourly IHD usage and continuous hourly consumption of electricity of 501 households living in a southern area of Kyoto, Japan, over 36 days in summer 2012 provide evidence on the effects of real-time information feedback over time. The cumulative usage of IHDs reduced hourly electricity consumption of “energy-using” households whose electricity consumption before the experiment had been far higher than other households. Contrary to the energy-conservation literature, the cumulative usage of IHDs raised electricity consumption of “energy-saving” households whose electricity consumption had been relatively modest before the experiment. This may be due to a “boomerang effect,” which raised electricity usage of well-informed households whose electricity saving had exceeded the optimal saving before obtaining information about their actual usage.