title: To make people save energy tell them what others do but also who they are: a preliminary study.
abstract: A way to make people save energy is by informing them that "comparable others" save more. We investigated whether, one can further improve this nudge by manipulating Who the "comparable others" are. We asked participants to imagine receiving feedback stating that their energy consumption exceeded that of "comparable others" by 10%. We varied Who the "comparable others" were in a 2 × 2 design: they were a household that was located either in the same neighborhood as themselves or in a different neighborhood, and its members were either identified (by names and a photograph) or unidentified. We also included two control conditions: one where no feedback was provided, and one where only statistical feedback was provided (feedback about an average household). We found that it matters Who the "comparable others" are. The most effective feedback was when the referent household was from the same neighborhood as the individual's and its members were not identified.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Graffeo
authors.affiliation: Department of School of Education and Center for Rationality, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Ilana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ritov
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicolao
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bonini
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento Trento, Italy ; Research Centre for Decision Making, Leeds Business School, Leeds University Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Constantinos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hadjichristidis
keywords: comparative feedback; identified victim effect; nudge; pro-environmental behavior; social norms