Behavioral economists have conducted several field experiments that show that people can be persuaded to reduce their energy consumption in response to simple “nudges,” such as information on how to save energy or on electricity usage relative to neighbors. A new randomized field experiment by Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn shows that while such nudges are effective among liberals, they can backfire among conservatives: Segments of Republican households actually increased energy consumption upon receiving the nudge. This is pretty startling evidence of how political polarization affects every day life choices, and not in a good way (although the effects are not huge). The NBER paper is here, a short discussion by the authors is here and the abstract is below.
“Nudges” are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation. We show that while the electricity conservation “nudge” of providing feedback to households on own and peers’ home electricity usage works with liberals, it can backfire with conservatives. Our regression estimates predict that a Democratic household that pays for electricity from renewable sources, that donates to environmental groups, and that lives in a liberal neighborhood reduces its consumption by 3 percent in response to this nudge. A Republican household that does not pay for electricity from renewable sources and that does not donate to environmental groups increases its consumption by 1 percent.