Pro-Environmental Incentives and Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment on Electricity Saving Behavior

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.