The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation

Hunt Allcott, Todd Rogers

NBER Working Paper No. 18492
Issued in October 2012
NBER Program(s):   EEE

We document three remarkable features of the Opower program, in which social comparison- based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide. First, initial reports cause high-frequency "action and backsliding," but these cycles attenuate over time. Second, if reports are discontinued after two years, effects are relatively persistent, decaying at 10-20 percent per year. Third, consumers are slow to habituate: they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years. We show that the previous conservative assumptions about post-intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design.

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This paper was revised on January 23, 2014

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w18492

Published: Allcott, Hunt, and Todd Rogers. 2014. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation." American Economic Review, 104(10): 3003-37. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.10.3003

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