Nudging households to save electricity with feedback: Experimental evidence from Vietnam

Information feedback based on the real-time records of smart meters has shown the potential to nudge residential electricity conservation in developed countries. However, evidence on this topic in developing countries is scarce and limited in scale. This paper provides new experimental evidence regarding how information feedback affects household electricity consumption in Vietnam, a developing country in Southeast Asia. By conducting a randomized controlled trial involving 1,028 households in Da Nang city, we show that three types of feedback – self-comparison, social comparison, and goal setting – can help households reduce their daily electricity consumption 4.1–6.7%. We explore the heterogeneous effects and find that social comparison exhibits discernible heterogeneity depending on the day of the week. Social comparison is also effective for both low and high quantiles of electricity consumers, whereas self-comparison and goal setting are effective mainly for the latter. We discuss the implications of our empirical findings for policies related to using feedback to nudge household electricity conservation.