Social Comparisons In Real Time: A Field Experiment Of Residential Electricity And Water Use*

In this paper, we carry out a field experiment that contributes in two important ways to the literature on how social comparisons affect residential energy and water use. First, we study a social comparison treatment that is continuous and communicated via pre-installed in-home displays, which are salient and updated in real time. Second, we estimate the effects of provision of social comparisons on two different resources - electricity and water - in the same experimental setting. We find that, on average, our social comparison reduces daily residential energy consumption by 6.7 percent but has no effect on overall residential water use.